Images Of An American Land

Download or read book Images of an American Land written by Thomas Carter and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In thirteen well-illustrated essays, this book tells the story of the building of the American West and of the edifices that are as much a part of the history of the region as the people who built them. Organised in sequence according to central themes in the history of the West, the collection begins with two essays that describe the cultural connections between East and West during the late nineteenth century. The next two essays place American building forms in their western context, emphasising the distinctive regional qualities of the buildings and the lifeways they represent. The third pair of essays highlights the fact that in settling the West, Americans had to brush aside existing populations, often with serious ramifications for the displaced. Other essays focus on various ethnic groups and women and the exploitation of resources as a significant facet of western architectural development -- and the effect of such exploitation on the western landscape.

Download or read book American Geography written by Sandra S. Phillips and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Everyday America written by Chris Wilson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-03-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of seventeen essays examining the field of American cultural landscapes past and present. The role of J. B. Jackson and his influence on the field is a explored in many of them.

Download or read book Devour the Land written by Makeda Best and published by Harvard Art Museums. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the impacts of militarism on the American landscape, through the lens of art, environmental studies, and politics Devour the Land considers how contemporary photographers have responded to the US military's impact on the domestic environment since the 1970s, a dynamic period for environmental activism as well as for photography. This catalogue presents a lively range of voices at the intersection of art, environmentalism, militarism, photography, and politics. Alongside interviews with prominent contemporary artists working in the landscape photography tradition, the images speak to photographers' varied motivations, personal experiences, and artistic approaches. The result is a surprising picture of the ways violence and warfare surround us. Although most modern combat has taken place abroad, the US domestic landscape bears the footprint of armed conflict--much of the environmental damage we live with today was caused by our own military and the expansive network of industries supporting its work. Designed to evoke a field book and to nod toward ephemera produced by earlier artists and activists, the catalogue features works by dozens of photographers, including Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Dorothy Marder, Alex Webb, Terry Evans, and many more.

Download or read book Main Street Revisited written by Richard V. Francaviglia and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 1996-06-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an archetype for an entire class of places, Main Street has become one of America's most popular and idealized images. In Main Street Revisited, the first book to place the design of small downtowns in spatial and chronological context, Richard Francaviglia finds the sources of romanticized images of this archetype, including Walt Disney's Main Street USA, in towns as diverse as Marceline, Missouri, and Fort Collins, Colorado. Francaviglia interprets Main Street both as a real place and as an expression of collective assumptions, designs, and myths; his Main Streets are treasure troves of historic patterns. Using many historical and contemporary photographs and maps for his extensive fieldwork and research, he reveals a rich regional pattern of small-town development that serves as the basis for American community design. He underscores the significance of time in the development of Main Street's distinctive personality, focuses on the importance of space in the creation of place, and concentrates on popular images that have enshrined Main Street in the collective American consciousness.

Download or read book The Way to Rainy Mountain written by N. Scott Momaday and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 1976-09-01 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in paperback by UNM Press in 1976, The Way to Rainy Mountain has sold over 200,000 copies. "The paperback edition of The Way to Rainy Mountain was first published twenty-five years ago. One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth. "The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself."--from the new Preface

Download or read book Land in the American West written by William G. Robbins and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the history of the United States, the concepts of “land” and “the West” have fired the American imagination and fueled controversy. The essays in Land in the American West deal with complex, troublesome, and interrelated questions regarding land: Who owns it? Who has access to it? What happens when private rights infringe upon the public good, or when one ethnic group is pitted against another, or when there is a conflict between economic and environmental values? Many of these questions have deep historical roots. They all have special significance in the modern American West, where natural resources are still abundant and large areas of land are federally owned.