Books by Sally Martin Katz
American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present
by Sandra S. Phillips, Sally Martin Katz
Drawing from the vast photography collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States
From the earliest photographic records of human habitation to the latest aerial and digital pictures, from almost uninhabited desert and isolated mountainous territories to suburban sprawl and densely populated cities, this compilation offers an increasingly nuanced perspective on the American landscape. Divided by region, these photographs address ways in which different histories and traditions of land use have given rise to different cultural transitions: from the Midwestern prairies and agricultural traditions of the South, to the riverine systems in the Northeast, and the environmental challenges and riches of the far West. American Geography also looks at the evidence of older habitation from the adobe dwellings and ancient cultures of the Southwest to the Midwestern mounds, many of them prehistoric.
SFMOMA's last photography exhibition to consider land use, Crossing the Frontier (1996), examined only the American West. At the time, this focus offered a different way to think about landscape, and a useful way to reconsider pictures of the region. American Geography expands upon the groundwork laid by Crossing the Frontier, providing a complex, thought-provoking survey.
Photographers include: Carleton E. Watkins, Barbara Bosworth, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Mitch Epstein, An-My Lê, William Eggleston, Alec Soth, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Victoria Sambunaris, Emmet Gowin, Robert Adams, Terry Evans, Dorothea Lange and Mark Ruwedel, among others.
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Louis Stettner
by David Campany, Sally Martin Katz, James Iffland, Karl Orend
A major new monograph on the American photographer Louis Stettner (1922-2016), published to accompany the largest retrospective on his work to date.
Brooklyn-born Louis Stettner (1922-2016) created thousands of images over the course of a career that spanned almost eighty years. Acquiring his first camera as a young teenager, he quickly made a name for himself at New York's famous Photo League, where he formed friendships with Sid Grossman and Weegee. He served as a combat photographer in World War II, and the experience of fighting fascism left him with a lasting belief in the fundamental humanity of the common man. After the war, Stettner arrived in Paris in 1947, where he stayed for five years. During this time, he forged a lasting relationship with Brassaï, the city and its people.
Stettner's work defies categorization, containing elements of both the New York street photography aesthetic and the lyrical humanism of the French tradition. A lifelong Marxist, Stettner celebrated the working class and was inspired by his reading of Walt Whitman and the inner humanity that constantly drew him to the lives of ordinary men and women. For all its diversity, however, Stettner's work is thematically consistent: he sought out beauty in common people and their everyday life.
Accompanying the largest retrospective on Stettner's work to date, this substantial monograph at last gives his work the recognition it deserves. Essays by David Campany, James Iffland, Karl Orend and Sally Martin Katz chart Stettner's work chronologically from his early days in New York and Paris, through to his later use of colour photography, to his final meditations on the landscape of Les Alpilles. Showcasing more than 150 photographs spanning his entire career, the book also includes previously unpublished images and some of his hitherto almost unknown colour work, as well as a selection of Stettner's writings.
Accompanies the travelling exhibition of the same name, which showed at MAPFRE Madrid from June to August 2023, and is at MAPFRE Barcelona from June to September 2024.
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