Read more
"Illuminating at almost every turn, with a telling analytical expressiveness, an utterly persuasive narrative arc, and a tour-de-force impact. No work of art has made it more richly possible to see the usable pasts of the Lower East Side than Blair's book."
--Thomas J. Ferraro, author of Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America "This is an ambitious, erudite, and richly layered book, one that provides both panoramic breadth and rigorous in-depth analysis. With beautiful prose and great narrative force, Blair shows how the Lower East Side became an experimental space in which new techniques of visualizing and narrating modern America were not only tested but also generated."
--Catherine Rottenberg, editor of Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side
About the author
Sara Blair
Summary
How New York’s Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing America
New York City's Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the "other half," was also a crucible for experimentation in photography, film, literature, and visual technologies. Sara Blair traces the career of the Lower East Side as a place where image-makers, writers, and social reformers tested new techniques for apprehending America—and their subjects looked back, confronting the means used to represent them. This dynamic shaped the birth of American photojournalism, early cinema, and the changing life of print culture as well as the work of such figures as Stephen Crane, Henry Roth, Ben Shahn, Allen Ginsberg, Martha Rosler, and LeRoi Jones. How the Other Half Looks examines the practices of observation that emerged from this critical site of encounter, showing how they have informed changing narratives of America, its citizens, and its possible futures.
Additional text
"Shortlisted for the MSA Book Prize, Modern Studies Association"
