Three great book purchases.
posted:
I found three great books the other day at what is becoming one of my favorite bookstores. I was able to buy all three of them for fewer than twenty dollars! I bought a book on Paul Manship, another on Kathe Kollwitz (in German….), and Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of my favorite photographers.
Arthur Miller wrote a great Forward in the book on Bresson-
“There was plenty of glitz in America in the sixties and seventies, yes and in the forties, the era of these pictures, but clearly Cartier-Bresson was trying to get behind it to the substance of American society. And since his is fundamentally a tragic vision he reacted most feelingly to what in America he saw as related to its decay, its pain. The very horizon is often oppressive, jagged with junked cars, the detritus of consumer culture, which after all is a culture of planned waste, engineered obsolescence. Whatever lasts is boring, what demands its own replacement energizes our imaginations. Reagan’s ‘It’s morning in America’ made it difficult, if not impermissible, to take a straight look at real life on this continent.”
Arthur Miller wrote a great Forward in the book on Bresson-
“There was plenty of glitz in America in the sixties and seventies, yes and in the forties, the era of these pictures, but clearly Cartier-Bresson was trying to get behind it to the substance of American society. And since his is fundamentally a tragic vision he reacted most feelingly to what in America he saw as related to its decay, its pain. The very horizon is often oppressive, jagged with junked cars, the detritus of consumer culture, which after all is a culture of planned waste, engineered obsolescence. Whatever lasts is boring, what demands its own replacement energizes our imaginations. Reagan’s ‘It’s morning in America’ made it difficult, if not impermissible, to take a straight look at real life on this continent.”
