Distinctly American: The Photography of Wright Morris

by Alan Trachtenberg, Ralph Lieberman, Wright Morris (Photographer)

Wright Morris was the poet laureate of Middle America. An icon of the 1940s, he died in 1998. Honored many times for his literary work, Morris twice received the prestigious American Book Award for The Field of Vision (1957) and Plains Song (1981), and pioneered the "photo-text." But Morris also created memorable images capturing the soul and mystique of the Midwest. Morris's images are the expression of his life-long quest to discover a vernacular and imagined America. His images brilliantly subvert such "clichéd" motifs as grain elevators, Model T Fords, a farmer's cutlery set, or dusty badlands. Here, for the first time, the full emotional impact of his extraordinarily beautiful photographs-as forceful as his more celebrated writing-has been given free reign.

Genres: Photography

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Alan Trachtenberg was Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[Bruddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know little to nothing about photography, but was intrigued by an essay I read in the NY Times regarding the writer/photographer Wright Morris and so withdrew this book from my library. As one of the two essays in the book points out, Morris’s photographs at first glance are reminiscent of the documentary work done by Walker Evans during the Great Depression. Similar to Evans, Morris photographed rural landscapes, buildings, objects and interior shots of rooms, all in black and white. But whereas Evans’ frequent purpose (not withstanding the aesthetic of his photographs) was to record what he saw, Wright’s photographs seem more concerned with conveying a visual narrative. He presents an image in a manner that asks the viewer to consider how that image—whether it be of a place or an object—relates to its environment, particularly how it relates to people in that environment, though they be unseen in the photograph.

Although I generally found Morris’ photography fascinating, I did wonder to what extent (and how often) his photographs were staged. And if they were staged, how successful was Morris in deciding how to arrange the object(s) he was presenting. Some photographs are less successful (to me) because they seem to be based more on fixed ideas and thereby lack the visual fluidness necessary to create the narrative quality he often achieves to great effect.

Beyond being a photographer, Wright Morris was also a prolific and highly regarded writer of novels, short stories and memoirs. He also created several photo-texts in which he experimented with combining images with words.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up as Wright Morris did on the plains of Nebraska, I believe one's eye is educated by the vast grid of east-west and north-south roads, the mostly uninterrupted flat landscape, the big sky, and intense light and shadow. I see this in many of his photographs, like "House in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska 1940". Here a weather-beaten, abandoned house stands alone on a slight rise in a snow-covered field under a bright winter sun. The house faces the camera, only one side visible, and in the wall there is one dark, vertical window. A sagging snow fence hugs the edge of the field, and beyond it are the bare branches of a small tree. Above is a hazy scrim of clouds against open sky. The stark simplicity of the picture may strike some as deliberately formalist or minimalist. To the eye of a plainsman, it's familiar and somehow "just right."

The entire collection of photographs in this book, taken mostly in the 1940s, captures a deep stillness, chiefly because they reflect evidence of human activity (houses, schools, cars, store fronts, grain elevators, interiors of houses), but in nearly all of them people are absent. Even in a barbershop, with a variety of current calendars festooning the walls and plants growing in pots and leaning toward the sunlit windows, there is no one. The chairs are empty.

It's easy to oversimplify the intent of these photographs, as Alan Trachtenberg and Ralph Lieberman argue in their essays included in this book. For me, they represent a way of seeing that looks for balance and rest, while acknowledging at the same time that everything must change. The tension between those two things is captured ironically in the last photo, "Juke Box, Southern Indiana 1950," in which a glorious, 1930s-style, lighted juke box stands against a wall under two framed pictures, what looks like a ceramic flying fish, and in the upper left corner a sign reading, "No Dancing."

This book of 80 beautifully reproduced black and white photographs includes a chronology of Wright Morris' career as writer and photographer (1910-1998) and a bibliography of books by and about him. A handsomely designed and elegant book. Worth having.