Dust Bowl Descent

By Bill Ganzel

Book Overview

Dust Bowl Descent by Bill Ganzel, University of Nebraska Press, 136 pages, duotone, 1984. Photos from the FSA and Ganzel's contemporary photographs are coupled with oral history interviews to give an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080322107X
• ISBN13: 9780803221079
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 1.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 10.6" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Strong faces of people made famous.

Photographer Bill Ganzel grew up on the Great Plains and after seeing an exhibition of Farm Security Administration photos in 1970 had the unique idea of searching out the places and people of the original photos and photographing them again. This stunning book is the result of his quest. All the photos have detailed captions and also the thoughts of those Ganzel interviewed. Of the hundred and eighty-nine photos in the book just over half are from the FSA files, the rest are the result of Ganzel's searching out the original locations over a five year period. Amazingly he found several people who had become famous (though still anonymous) because their photos were widely reproduced in newspapers and magazines in the thirties. One of these was Florence Thompson who was the Migrant Mother in the world famous 1936 photo by Dorothea Lange. I think it is the greatest photo ever taken and Roy Stryker head of the FSA photo section said it was THE image of the collection. This is what he said in 1972 ...''After all these years, I still get that picture out and look at it. The quietness and the stillness of it...Was that woman calm or not? I've never known. I cannot account for that woman. So many times I've asked myself what is she thinking? She has all the suffering of mankind in her but all the perseverance too. A restraint and a strange courage. You can see anything you want to in her. She is immortal. Look at that hand. Look at the child. Look at those fingers--those two heads of hair.'' So it was a wonderful surprise for me to see the photo Ganzel took in 1979 of Florence and her three healthy grown-up daughters on page thirty-one facing the original Migrant Mother photo of her on page thirty. He also found Darrel Coble who was the young boy running after his father in the well known 1936 Athur Rothstein photo 'Fleeing a dust storm', taken in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Another unknown yet famous person who survived the Depression and prospered. Other photos show railroad crossings, houses, tractors in 1936 fields with combines in 1977 fields, cowhands at dinner, churchs, gas stations, county fairs, court houses. Everyday life and people on the Plains separated by forty years. This is a wonderful book capturing the feel of the thirties on the Plains and again in the Seventies. If you collect books of documentary photos this one must be in your collection. A gem. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.