Book Review: Fields of Vision: The Photographs of Esther Bubley: The Library of Congress

Esther Bubley isn't as well-known as some of the other FSA/OWI photographers who covered life in America from 1936 to 1945 but I think her stature is growing as the years go by. She started to work for Roy Stryker, head of the photo-agency, in 1942 when she was only twenty-one. He promoted her to a field photographer in 1943 and she contributed over 2000 images during the year.

The fifty photos in the book are all from that '43. A fascinating fifteen are from a two week assignment to photograph wartime transportation with Bubley covering Greyhound buses. She travelled from Washington to several cities in the east of the country and back again. 445 photos from that assignment were probably her greatest contribution to the OWI files (she repeated the assignment, again for Stryker, in 1947 when he was the head of the Standard Oil photo library). The other photos in the book are a selection from Washington and the surrounding States in the documentary style that makes the OWI collection so important as a record of American during the war years.

The book is an excellent introduction to Esther Bubley. The format is the same as the other Library of Congress Fields of Vision books: a simple, elegant design with one captioned photo a page, printed as a 200 screen duotone. Each book has an informative essay about the photographer. If you want to know about Ms Bubley's career after 1945 check out a lovely Aperture book: Esther Bubley: On Assignment.

Fields of Vision: The Photographs of Esther Bubley: The Library of Congress is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Title spread.

The first seven pages have an introduction and essay about Esther Bubley.

Some of the other Fields of Vision titles.

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