Search -
The Photograph and The American Dream, 1840-1940
The Photograph and The American Dream 18401940 Author:Bill Clinton Perhaps no nation has been so thoroughly shaped by its dreams as has America, and perhaps no other dreams have been captured on camera as often and as diversely as America's. The mythic American Dream has been the subject of photographic documentation since the 1840s, when photographers first began traveling to the New World in search of subject... more »s. From an unknown photographer's picture of newborn George B. Billings Rego, scion of an immigrant Portuguese family and the first child ever born at Boston Long Wharf, to Lewis Hine's wrenching image of a young cotton mill worker in Georgia, to Alfred Stieglitz's awesome New York cityscapes, the photographs collected here reveal the multiple facets of 100 of the most decisive years of American development. Between 1840 and 1940, immigrants became homeowners, untouched lands exploded in superhuman industrial growth, tourists replaced pioneers, and the American metropolis grew taller and shinier--and the camera caught it all. I believe in the American Dream. I have lived it. Where else could an ordinary boy born in Hope, Arkansas grow up to become President? The moving photographs in this beautiful exhibition chronicle some of the steps along the way to achieving the American Dream. They show us that the journey was not always easy, but nonetheless Americans persevered. ... Just as the camera captures an unblinking image, so the Americans pictured here face the world and its challenges head on. --Bill Clinton
Essays by Andreas Bluhm, Stephen White. Foreword by Bill Clinton. Photographers include: Mathew Brady, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz. 8.25 x 10.5 in.