Bust to Boom: Documentary Photographs of Kansas, 1936-1949 Review

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Bust to Boom: Documentary Photographs of Kansas, 1936-1949 ReviewVery few of the adults pictured in this book smile with their teeth showing. You can see why by the handful who do: the teeth tell you better than anything else that this is Kansas in the 1930s and dental care is an unaffordable luxury.
The earliest photographs in this book were created on behalf of the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal project which (among many other things) attempted to educate the public about rural poverty. These photographs show closed banks, empty expressions, and farms turned to dust -- the people here did not know what had hit them or when the Depression would be over. The late 1930s photographs are not entirely bleak: they document 4-H fairs and the FSA's improvement efforts. The photographs from World War II show Kansas at work: at Fort Riley, on trains, in wartime industrial jobs. By the time the post-war photographs were taken (for Standard Oil of New Jersey), Kansas had recovered to become a different, and more modern, state.
Oddly for a photography book, the text commentary is so outstanding that it almost outshines the pictures. The author, Donald Worster, gives the reader an interesting history of Kansas as it approached the "Dirty Thirties," when the dust turned day to night, no one had a spare dime and the state started to empty. Worster describes the state during World War II, when young men went to war and everyone else went back to work. Although the state slowly recovered, the Depression, the war and their aftermath scarred all Kansans who lived through them. Worster's erudite and highly readable commentary creates in one's mind a separate, unique set of pictures that enhances the experience of viewing the actual photographs.Bust to Boom: Documentary Photographs of Kansas, 1936-1949 Overview"I was supposed to be taking pictures to show that this was a great country and I was finding out it really was. . . . I didn't know it at the time, but I was having a last look at America as it used to be."--John VachonKansans of the 1930s and 1940s lived through more sweeping changes than any other generation past or present. Destructive forces of nature, an economy gone awry, and a devastating--and ironically, economically renewing--war left the world irrevocably altered. In this captivating collection, some of America's best-known documentary photographers provide a valuable glimpse into that tumultuous time.Constance Schulz has brought together a diverse array of photographs from three extensive documentary projects: the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. The result is a unique visual record of American life by photographers Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Edwin and Louise Rosskam, and Charles Rotkin. Collectively, their work has immortalized the faces and emotions of FSA-aided farmers and the harsh lives of coal miners, dust-bowl debris and tumbleweeds, a failed bank and a thriving stockyard, locomotives and Mexican-American railroad workers, oil derricks, wheat country, black cavalry troops, and 4-H Club fairs.In his enlightening introduction, environmental historian Donald Worster provides historical context for the images. Examining state, national, and international events from 1930 to 1950, he explores the agricultural, business, social, political, and environmental climates as well as the composition of the state's population and its inevitable shift away from rural life toward urbanization and industrialization. Schulz also supplies fundamental information on the photographers and the photographic projects.Originally created as a means to promote government and business programs, the FSA, OWI, and Standard Oil photographs--most never before published--are an excellent source for individuals and communities searching for a visual record of their local heritage during two of the most crucial decades in American history.This 8" x 9-1/2" book contains 94 photographs.

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