Artists Unframed by Merry A. Foresta. Princeton Architectural Press, 160 pages, $33.50.
The snapshot records a moment in time quite differently from a portrait photograph. One presents the subject as they wish to be seen in a collaborative work with the photographer while the other is a slice of life frozen for eternity as it was being lived. The snapshot is arguably the real person while the portrait is a projection. For good or bad the snapshot shows us interacting with others and our environment in a way that tells much about who we are as people.
Within the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art are vast collections of letters, documents, correspondence and photographs that provide fascinating details of the lives of these artists. Merry A. Foresta has unearthed a broad collection of these images and presented them with background information on the artist and that particular time in their career. We see Andy Warhol standing on a New York street in 1949 just a few weeks after graduating and long before fame arrived, or Jackson Pollock in blurred motion as he applies paint to one of his enormous canvases. Through Foresta's research we get to share in the pictures of artists with friends and on their own as these moments were documented. -
