Photographs do more than commemorate a moment in time: They evoke emotion, capture our memories and offer new vantage points.
WE SHALL OVERCOME
Edited by Frist Art Museum curator Kathryn E. Delmez, We Shall Overcome: Press Photographs of Nashville During the Civil Rights Era captures an important period in civil rights history in Nashville. Some 100 images depict the first days of school integration, peaceful protests via sit-ins and renewed determination and sorrow after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Images of violent physical struggles stand in compelling contrast to snapshots of black children and their parents on the first day at a new school, their faces scared, resolute and perhaps hopeful. Congressman John Lewis, who appears in these photos as a young protester, writes in the foreword, “Our protests were love in action. We wanted to redeem not only our attackers, but the very soul of America.”
LETHAL BEAUTY
French photojournalist Yan Morvan has published images of serial killers, Hells Angels and war zones. With Battlefields, rather than documenting violent clashes, he’s turned his lens to what comes after. The seeming ordinariness of former battle sites makes this imposing yet illuminating book a thought-provoking read: A field dotted with shrubs, a crumbling stone wall and a mountain rising in the distance all invite consideration of what happened before, as seen from the perspective of a soldier on the front lines. The 430 photos of 250 war zones range from the Battle of Jericho (1315-1210 B.C.) to 2011’s Libyan Civil War. Readers may choose a specific historical era or embark on a then-to-now visual journey of contemplation.
COLOR AND CLARITY
In History as They Saw It: Iconic Moments from the Past in Color, Wolfgang Wild and Jordan Lloyd present 120 restored and colorized historical photos, from a well-known Dorothea Lange portrait to images of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge and Civil War veterans playing cards. Wild writes, “The past and the present were the same, are the same, and what has changed is not the nature of the present moment, but rather the technical recording capabilities of our cameras.” History as They Saw It succeeds in making its images (and the people and events they’ve captured) feel less remote. The age of the photos (which date from 1839 to 1949) recedes as the reader gazes upon portraits of Ellis Island immigrants, Jesse James and even the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. Well-researched and eminently interesting captions add context, and colorizer Lloyd describes his processes in a back-of-book section. Altogether, the collection offers an entertaining exploration of history, culture, art and photography.
This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
