Distinctly American: The Photography of Wright Morris

Distinctly American: The Photography of Wright Morris by Trachtenberg, Alan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781858941769.

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. Morriss 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 farmers 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.