audiobook Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History by David H. Lewis in Arts-Photography

Description

Charles Cushman (1896-1972) photographed a disappearing world in living color. Cushmans midcentury America--a place normally seen only through a scrim of gray--reveals itself as a place as vivid and real as the view through our window.The Day in Its Color introduces readers to Cushmans extraordinary work; a recently unearthed archive of photographs that is the largest known body of early color photographs by a single photographer; 14;500 in all; most shot on vivid; color-saturated Kodachrome stock. From 1938-1969; Cushman--a sometime businessman and amateur photographer with an uncanny eye for everyday detail--travelled constantly; shooting everything he encountered as he ventured from New York to New Orleans; Chicago to San Francisco; and everywhere in between. His photos include portraits; ethnographic studies; agricultural and industrial landscapes; movie sets and media events; children playing; laborers working; and thousands of street scenes; all precisely documented in time and place. The result is a chronicle of an era almost never seen; or even envisioned; in color.This well-preserved collection is all the more remarkable for having gone undiscovered for decades. What makes the photos most valuable; however; is the wide range of subjects; landscapes; and moods it captures--snapshots of a lost America as yet untouched by a homogenizing overlay of interstate highways; urban renewal; chain stores; and suburban development--a world of hand-painted signs; state fairs; ramshackle shops; small town living and bustling urban scenes. The book also reveals the fascinating and startling life story of the man who stood; unseen; on the other side of the lens; surely one of Americas most impressive amateur photographers and outsider artists.With over 150 gorgeous color prints; The Day in Its Color gives us one of the most evocative visual histories of mid-20th century America that we have.