Books by Sarah Hermanson Meister

Towards the end of her life, Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) remarked that "all photographs-not only those that are so-called 'documentary,' and every photograph really is documentary and belongs in some place, has a place in history-can be fortified by words." Though Lange's career is widely heralded, this connection between words and pictures has received scant attention. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalogue provides a fresh approach to some of her best-known and beloved photographs, highlighting the ways in which these images first circulated in magazines, government reports, books, etc. An introductory text by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister will be followed by plates organized according to "words" from a variety of sources that expand our understanding of the photographs. The featured photographs will range from Lange's first engagement with documentary photography in San Francisco in the early-mid 1930s, including her iconic White Angel Breadline (1933), to landmark photographs she made for the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) such as Migrant Mother (1936), powerful photographs made during World War II in California's internment camps for Japanese-Americans, major photo-essays published in Life magazine on Mormon communities in Utah (in 1954) and County Clare, Ireland (in 1955), and quietly damning photographs made in the Berryessa Valley in 1956-57, before the region was flooded by the construction of a dam intended to address California's chronic water shortages. Exhibition opens December 2019.

"Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditaion on a single work from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art"--Front cover, inside flap.

Sarah Hermanson Meister is a Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Frances Benjamin Johnston (American, 1864¿1952) achieved acclaim as a photo journalist and studio photographer based in Washington, D.C., and is recognized as a pioneer for women in photography. LaToya Ruby Frazier is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is represented by Gavin Brown¿s Enterprise in New York.

Comprised of 159 extraordinary platinum plates, Frances Benjamin Johnston's Hampton Album documents life at the Hampton Institute marking a pivotal moment in this historically black university's history . Frances Benjamin Johnston (American, 1864-1952), one of the first women in America to work as a professional photographer, was commissioned in 1899 to photograph the Hampton Institute, then a thirty year old institution dedicated to the practical and academic education of freed slaves and Native Americans. What became known as the Hampton Album - comprised of 159 platinum plates exhibited in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris - is Johnston's signature work, and has become a touchstone for contemporary historians and artists. The leather-bound album was discovered serendipitously by Lincoln Kirstein in a Washington, D.C. bookstore during World War II and donated to MoMA in 1965.