American West in the Thirties - 122 Photographs

New York: Dover Publications, Inc,., 1981. First U.S. Printing Stated . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 9 1/4" x 10 1/4. Rothstein, Arthur. 121 Pages. A Dover original. Three-line Jack Pardee owner's inked stamp on inside front cover. No other marks or stmaps. Illustrated with full-page black and white photographs on every page. Rothstein was a photojournalist for more than 45 years and the photographs in this volume are from his years as photographer for the Farm Security Administdration. His job was to photographs small towns, rural areas and general agricultural conditions throughout the country. The author says his photography is based on the concept ot of knowing the subject and telling the story as graphicallly as he could by using design and composition to enhance the effect and make the message clear. He preferred to portray people with dignity and symmpatehy and to captlure exporessijons with the greatest meaning. The spaces are vast; the solitude immense. Abandoned farms dot the drought-stricken plains where great dust storms plague man's efforts to wrest a living from the earth. It is a land peopled by figures out of the national mythology: grizzled cowpunchers branding cattle; aged prospectors still seeking that ellusive strike; homesteaders clearing the land. It is the American West. Not in frontier days, or even 100 years ago, but in the 1930s. This book, lavishly printed on coated stock, portrays the West as it looked nearly 75 years ago; in human beings under trying conditions with sympathy and compassion oif a great photographer's ability to capture and convey his vision of a special time and place..