Academic

New York Review of Books: A Way to Think About Eating

By propertyprof

My favorite librarian was excited to see a Walker Evans photograph used to illustrate a story in the most recent issue of NYROB.  It appears with Jason Epstein essay on Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.  The story (entitled "A Way to Think about Eating) is about eating habits and how people throughout the world are now adopting the (self-destructive) eating habits of the west.  The illustration (at left) is of a roadside stand.  The caption reads "A roadside store between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro, Alabama, 1936; photograph by Walker Evans."  Now, it isn't every day that national magazines print Walker Evans photographs, though perhaps they ought to do so more often, because there are some really, really beautiful scenes.

Hmm, I thought; I travel the road between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro a bunch and I don't remember seeing anything that might be a remnant of that store--I'll have to look for this next time I'm down that way.  There are, though, quite a few remnants of stores along the way--and that's worth a post at some point.  So that set me to looking through the Library of Congress' website for more details, which might be helpful in locating the building.  You can imagine how pleased I was to find an entry for "Roadside store between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro, Alabama"!      Of course, when I clicked on it, I found not the picture above, but the one on the right.  A little more digging demonstrated that the NYROB caption was wrong.  The picture above is actually "Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama."  Ah well, what the heck--they're both really great photographs and, as I say, it's awesome that either of them as presented to readers today. 

I think you'll love the Library of Congress' website with photographs from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information Collection.  They provide hours of entertainment.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).