Facing Change: Documenting America

by Leah Bendavid-Val

Published in cooperation with the Library of Congress, this astounding collection of images by award-winning photographers tells the story of today’s America—and provides an enduring legacy that will inform the way we address our future. On Inauguration Day, 2009, a group of photographers who
were in Washington to document the ceremony began a
conversation that led to the foundation of Facing Change. This
nonprofit collective has a bold to create a new national
portrait of America. Its members include some of the country’s
most celebrated photojournalists. Their vision is inspired by
the Farm Security Administration’s project that documented
the Great Depression. Chronicling the challenges of modern
America, these photographs offer compelling stories of people
around the country who are coping with the aftermath of
recent immigration, health care, housing, the war in Iraq,
Katrina, the great recession and profound economic disparity.
The book includes images from the original FSA project as well
as interviews with Library of Congress photography experts,
which together illustrate photojournalism’s role in engendering
change in America. The Facing Change photographers are each
introduced in intimate essays that describe their history, work,
and aspirations for the project. The photographs’ revelations—
and their power—tell a collective story that continues to unfold,
that affects every one of us, that will last many lifetimes and, it
is hoped, impact some of the lives it has touched.
Photographers included in the
David Burnett
Alan Chin
Donna Ferrato
Danny Wilcox Frazier
Stanley Greene
Andrew Lichtenstein
Carlos Javier Ortiz
Darcy Padilla
Lucian Perkins
Maggie Steber

Genres: Photography

252 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2015

About the author

Leah Bendavid-Val is a historian of photography who has worked with Russian photographers for more than two decades. She is the author most recently of Song Without Words: The Photographs & Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy (published in October 2007). Her two earlier books about Russian photographers and themes are Propaganda & Dreams (1999); and Changing Reality (1991).

Bendavid-Val is former Director of Photography Publishing for National Geographic Books. Books published in her program for popular and professional audiences have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Bendavid-Val is author of two books on the history of National Geographic photography—Stories on Paper & Glass (2001) and the best-selling National Geographic: The Photographs (1994), which is still in print. She is co-author and editor of National Geographic Image Collection, on the New York Times Bestseller List in December 2009.

Based on her Russia and National Geographic work, Leah Bendavid-Val has served as curator for exhibitions at the International Center for Photography, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, and other museums. She teaches writing and book publishing for photographers at the Santa Fe Workshops in New Mexico. She was Commencement Speaker for the University of Maryland Department of Philosophy, Class of 2008.

(from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/l...)

Reviews

[Wendelle]

moving, momentous, message-brimming pictures of the working-class and the underclass in America.