Product Details
Hardcover
159 pages
Harry N Abrams
Published 1994
From Publishers Weekly
In Plowden's portraits of backwater America--decaying Main Street, general store, blacksmith, farmer--it is the photographer who ascribes significance to his subject through intense selective vision, technical near-perfection and a guaranteed popular response that can be appealed to again and again. Thus the pictures here wrongly may seem simply to have been left out of Plowden's 18 previous books ( Commonplace ) though many are of recent vintage. In a lengthy foreword, he lovingly ticks off a roster of self-reliant hometown people he has known, and nostalgically, almost petulantly, bemoans the now nearly complete surrender of bygone days of horse wagons and railroads to the superhighway's arid malls and condominiums. Plowden fans will be richly rewarded. BOMC dividend selection.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In his 19th book on the American scene, Plowden (The End of an Era, Norton, 1992) has focused on what epitomizes small towns-before this endangered species disappears altogether. The well-produced images, arranged roughly by topic (e.g., schools, theaters, churches, home interiors, restaurants, stores, and grain elevators) and representing towns in many states (including Iowa, Kansas, West Virginia, New York, Minnesota, and Idaho), speak eloquently of small-town life. Even more so, they speak of... read more |
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