The Hand of Man on America

E-373: Smithsonian Institution Press. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1971. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 4to. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 1971. 136 pages. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (light chipping present to the upper right corner of the front panel, rear panel rubbed). Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. David Plowden achieves in his photographs a political statement about the despoliation of mid 20th century America by the automobile as set against the stark loneliness of our landscape. His tools are the photographic geometry of line and form and the forceful contrast of black and white. Unlike the Parisian chronologist Eugene Atget, unlike Cartier Bresson, the master of form and movement, unlike Steichen's human empathy, what David "Chim" Seymour did for post War refugees, Plowden confronts the clumsy footprint of progress in his clever portrayal of the vast diversity of this country. Only two shots show people; one of the Phoebe Snow idling at the Scranton train station and the other of a white garage and its owner in Oklahoma; stark, geometric, spell binding. Color is non existent to Plowden and in fact to the B/W photographic world, it distracts from line and form, and confuses the eye. He sprinkles the short book with quotes from Gropius and Ruskin and Le Corbusier. EB; 4to 11" - 13" tall; 136 pages .