Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2012

Today is “Blooms­day,” the day when lit­er­a­ture lovers around the world gath­er in book­stores and Irish pubs and oth­er fit­ting places to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece of high mod­ernism, Ulysses.

June 16, 1904 was the day Joyce first went out for a walk with his future wife, Nora Barnacle–a fate­ful day in his life, which he decid­ed to com­mem­o­rate in his great nov­el, first pub­lished in Paris in 1922. All the events in the book–more than 700 dense­ly writ­ten pages of exper­i­men­tal prose rich in allu­sions and struc­tured around Home­r’s Odyssey–take place on that sin­gle day in 1904. Just as William Blake could hold eter­ni­ty in an hour, Joyce could frame an epic in a day.

To cel­e­brate the occa­sion we bring you a pair of videos. Above, the British actor and writer Stephen Fry speaks briefly about his love of Joyce’s book. To find out if there are any events near you, vis­it the Rosen­bach Muse­um & Library’s Blooms­day Cen­tral Web site. And to dive into the book, you can find copies in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

1905 Video: The Funeral of Hiram Cronk, The Last Surviving Veteran of the War of 1812

in History | June 16th, 2012

200 years ago today, Amer­i­ca stunned the world when it declared war on Britain, begin­ning what’s now called The War of 1812. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War had end­ed only 29 years ear­li­er. But despite agree­ments made with the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British kept pres­sur­ing the Unit­ed States, try­ing to sti­fle Amer­i­ca’s trade with France and the young nation’s expan­sion into the North­west Ter­ri­to­ry, among oth­er things. So the two coun­tries went to war again.

Now fast for­ward 93 years and watch as Hiram Cronk, the last sur­viv­ing vet­er­an of the war, gets laid to rest. Cronk, a shoe­mak­er by trade, served with the New York Vol­un­teers in the defense of Sack­et­t’s Har­bor, and lived to be 105 years old. Above, you’ll see crowds lin­ing the streets of Brook­lyn and watch­ing the mil­i­tary pro­ces­sion pass by. Some 25,000 peo­ple paid their respects that day.

via matthi­as­rasch­er

Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin: Live at the Royal Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

in Music | June 15th, 2012

Here’s a Fri­day night dou­ble fea­ture for the die-hard rock and roll fan: two full-length Led Zep­pelin movies.

Both films grew out of band man­ag­er Peter Grant’s dream of bring­ing the expe­ri­ence of a Led Zep­pelin con­cert to the big screen. And although both were essen­tial­ly attempts at the same thing, the two films were shot more than three years apart, so they show the band in two dis­tinct peri­ods of its career.

Led Zep­pelin Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall:

On Jan­u­ary 9, 1970, less than three months after the release of Led Zep­pelin II, the band played the his­toric Roy­al Albert Hall on the third night of an eight-show UK tour. By all accounts it was a high-ener­gy show. When the con­cert was over, Nick Logan of the New Music Express wrote:

I spoke to Jim­my Page after the show and he con­fessed that the whole band had suf­fered extreme nerves before­hand, main­ly because peo­ple like John Lennon, Eric Clap­ton and Jeff Beck had request­ed tick­ets. “But it was just like it was at the Albert Hall in the sum­mer,” said Jim­my, “with every­one danc­ing around the stage. It was a great feel­ing. What could be bet­ter than hav­ing every­one clap­ping and shout­ing along? It’s inde­scrib­able; but it just makes you feel that every­thing is worth­while.

You can read Logan’s review of the show, along with oth­er press reports, at LedZeppelin.com. The con­cert was filmed by Peter White­head and Stan­ley Dorf­man. But the band was unhap­py with the qual­i­ty of the footage, and it was put away until the release of the two-disc Led Zep­pelin DVD in 2003. The film (above) cap­tures the pow­er­ful ear­ly phase of the band’s career. Here’s the set list:

1. We’re Gonna Groove
2. I Can’t Quit You Baby
3. Dazed and Con­fused
4. White Sum­mer
5. What Is and What Should Nev­er Be
6. How Many More Times
7. Moby Dick
8. Whole Lot­ta Love
9. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Break­down
10. C’mon Every­body
11. Some­thin’ Else
12. Bring It On Home

The Song Remains the Same:

Unhap­py with the Roy­al Albert Hall film, Grant wait­ed sev­er­al years before try­ing to pro­duce anoth­er con­cert film. With lit­tle more than a week left in the band’s 1973 North Amer­i­can tour, he hired film­mak­er Joe Mas­sot to doc­u­ment the final three shows at New York’s Madi­son Square Gar­den. Mas­sot scram­bled to assem­ble a film crew before the con­certs, which took place July 27–29. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the pro­duc­tion was a dis­or­ga­nized mess. Again the band was unhap­py with the con­cert footage. Even­tu­al­ly Mas­sot was fired from the project and Peter Clifton was hired to com­plete the film. In 1974 the band rent­ed space at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in Eng­land to film sup­ple­men­tary con­cert footage.

The movie was final­ly released in Octo­ber of 1976. Fans loved it but crit­ics found the film ama­teur­ish and self-indul­gent. The con­cert footage was inter­spersed with “fan­ta­sy sequences” filmed by Mas­sot of Grant and the band mem­bers play­ing dif­fer­ent roles. “The Song Remains the Same is not a great film,” Page said lat­er, “but there’s no point in mak­ing excus­es. It’s just a rea­son­ably hon­est state­ment of where we were at that par­tic­u­lar time.” The con­cert cap­tures the band at the height of their fame. Here are the songs played in the con­cert scenes:

1. Bron-Yr-Aur
2. Rock and Roll
3. Black Dog
4. Since I’ve Been Lov­ing You
5. No Quar­ter
6. The Song Remains the Same
7. The Rain Song
8. Dazed and Con­fused
9. Stair­way to Heav­en
10. Moby Dick
11. Heart­break­er
12. Whole Lot­ta Love

A Master List of 500 Free Courses From Great Universities

in Online Courses | June 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the past two days, our list of Free Online Movies has been get­ting some good expo­sure. And we’ve got no com­plaints. But while assem­bling the movie list, we were also busy putting togeth­er a list of 500 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Here’s the low­down: This mas­ter list lets you down­load free cours­es from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and UC Berke­ley. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites. Right now you’ll find 55 cours­es in Phi­los­o­phy, 50 in His­to­ry, 50 in Com­put­er Sci­ence, 35 in Physics, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. Most of the cours­es were recent­ly pro­duced. But, in some cas­es, we’ve lay­ered in lec­ture series by famous intel­lec­tu­als record­ed years ago. Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list.

• African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle – YouTube– iTunes – Clay Car­son, Stan­ford
• Finan­cial Mar­kets 2011 — YouTube — iTunes — Web Site – Robert Shiller, Yale
• Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse – YouTube – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
• Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy – iTunes Video – YouTube – Robert Sapol­sky, Stan­ford
• Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) – Down­load Course – Chris­tine Hayes, Yale.
• Heidegger’s Being & Time – iTunes — Hubert Drey­fus, UC Berke­ley
• Inten­sive Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence Using C, PHP, and JavaScript – Mul­ti­ple For­mats – iTunes – David Malan, Har­vard
• Intro­duc­tion to Cos­mol­o­gy and Par­ti­cle Physics – YouTube – Sean Car­roll, Cal­tech
• Invi­ta­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture – Web Site — David Dam­rosch, Har­vard
• iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment in iOS5 - HD Video iTunes — Stan­dard-Def Video iTunes — Paul Hegar­ty, Stan­ford
• Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – YouTube — Web Site- Michael Sandel, Har­vard
• Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage – iTunes – John Sear­le, UC Berke­ley
• Physics for Future Pres­i­dents – YouTube – Richard Muller, UC Berke­ley
• Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics – Web Site - Richard Feyn­man, Pre­sent­ed at Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land
• Sci­ence, Mag­ic and Reli­gion - iTunes — YouTube – Courte­nay Raiai, UCLA
• The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 – YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Down­load Course – Amy Hunger­ford, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing – Web Site – Team taught, Stan­ford

Vis­it this list of Free Cours­es for many more hours of free enrich­ment. Sep­a­rate­ly, you might also want to check out our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons. It offers free lessons in over 40 lan­guages.

James Cameron Revisits the Making of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

in Film | June 15th, 2012

2001: A Space Odyssey, so its fans will tell you, is awe­some, amaz­ing, aston­ish­ing, astound­ing — and that does­n’t even exhaust their list of “A” adjec­tives. But how­ev­er emphat­i­cal­ly they’re spo­ken, those words don’t tell you much. I fear they some­times even put off poten­tial 2001-lovers — or at least those who would enjoy a screen­ing or three — who fear them­selves unequal to the impos­ing labor of appre­ci­a­tion ahead. You’ll learn more mean­ing­ful things about Kubrick­’s film in 2001: The Mak­ing of a Myth (made in 2001), a 45-minute doc­u­men­tary on its con­cep­tion, its pro­duc­tion, and its undi­min­ished res­o­nance in our cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion.

Intro­duced by film­mak­er James Cameron — he of The Ter­mi­na­tor, Avatar, and Aliens, sci­ence-fic­tion spec­ta­cles of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent nature — the pro­gram brings in a host of the orig­i­nal con­trib­u­tors to 2001’s look, feel, and psy­cho­log­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal verisimil­i­tude. We hear from those involved in the pho­tog­ra­phy, design, edit­ing, and even tech­ni­cal con­sul­tan­cy. Actor Keir Dul­lea, still best known for his role as astro­naut Dave Bow­man, has much to say about work­ing with his co-star HAL, and even the fel­lows in the ape suits offer insights into their non-ver­bal craft. Crit­i­cal minds such as Elvis Mitchell and Camille Paglia weigh in on the pic­ture’s simul­ta­ne­ous vis­cer­al and intel­lec­tu­al impact, but Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001 the book while Kubrick shot 2001 the film, puts it most sharply when describ­ing the intent of his direc­tor coun­ter­part: “He want­ed to make the prover­bial good sci­ence-fic­tion movie.” Mis­sion accom­plished.

H/T Maria Popo­va (aka Brain­Pick­er)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Inter­view with The New York­er

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net & PC in 1974

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Marlon Brando Screen Tests for Rebel Without A Cause (1947)

in Film | June 14th, 2012

Dur­ing the 1940s, Warn­er Broth­ers bought the rights to Robert Lind­ner’s book, Rebel With­out a Cause: The Hyp­no­analy­sis of a Crim­i­nal Psy­chopath, and began turn­ing it into a film. A par­tial script was writ­ten, and a 23-year old Mar­lon Bran­do was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For what­ev­er rea­son, the stu­dio aban­doned the orig­i­nal project, and even­tu­al­ly revived it eight years lat­er with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause appears here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

The James Dean Sto­ry by Robert Alt­man (Com­plete Film)

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen­test for East of Eden

Watch Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer, a 1963 Film That Captures the Creative Process of the Legendary Sci-Fi Author

in Literature, Television, Writing | June 14th, 2012

Sto­ry of a Writer shows all the con­tra­dic­tions the late Ray Brad­bury embod­ied: An unstop­pably curi­ous admir­er of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy who some called a “mechan­i­cal moron,” a non-dri­ver in mid­cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, an imag­in­er of the future who worked in a base­ment crowd­ed with paper files and trib­al masks. We watch the clas­sic IBM mot­to “THINK” catch the 43-year-old writer’s eye, yet we notice anoth­er sign post­ed above his type­writer: “DON’T THINK!” This half-hour tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary cap­tures that most instinc­tu­al of crafts­men in the ratio­nal genre of sci­ence fic­tion in all sorts of activ­i­ties ground­ed in his time, place, and pro­fes­sion: telling sto­ries and per­form­ing mag­ic for his daugh­ters, offer­ing guid­ance to younger writ­ers, “work­shop­ping” a piece with a cir­cle of asso­ciates in his liv­ing room, bicy­cling through town to get ideas, and tour­ing a fall­out shel­ter show­ground.

Pro­duced by David L. Wolper, best known for pro­grams like Roots, The Thorn Birds, and This is Elvis, Sto­ry of a Writer inter­weaves with these scenes from Brad­bury’s dai­ly life a jagged­ly cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of his short sto­ry “Dial Dou­ble Zero.” In it, a man receives a series of unwant­ed phone calls from what even­tu­al­ly starts to sound like the phone sys­tem itself, which has, for unex­plained rea­sons, spon­ta­neous­ly devel­oped intel­li­gence. In Brad­bury’s imag­i­na­tion, tech­nol­o­gy may do trou­bling things, but rarely malev­o­lent ones. “I’ve always been in favor of sci­ence that can pro­long and beau­ti­fy our lives,” he says in voiceover. The broad­cast even includes one of Brad­bury’s many plain­spo­ken but enthu­si­as­tic lec­tures about the craft of writ­ing, which has much in com­mon with his sim­i­lar­ly themed 2001 speech pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. As he sums up his rec­om­men­da­tions to aspi­rants con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of their work: “It does­n’t have to be the great­est. It does have to be you.”

You can find Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

World Cinema: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Playful Homage to Cinema History

in Film | June 14th, 2012

Cha­cun son ciné­ma (To Each His Own Cin­e­ma) is a 2007 French anthol­o­gy film that brings togeth­er short films by 36 acclaimed direc­tors. Lars von Tri­er, Jane Cam­pi­on, Gus Van Sant, and Abbas Kiarosta­mi all con­tributed to the project. Meant to com­mem­o­rate the 60th anniver­sary of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the film orig­i­nal­ly aired on Canal+ in France. And, for rea­sons that remain unknown to us, that broad­cast did­n’t include the short film con­tributed by Joel and Ethan Coen, World Cin­e­ma. Nor did it appear on a lat­er DVD release. If you wait long enough, these kinds of films even­tu­al­ly sur­face on YouTube. And, as luck would have it, you can watch World Cin­e­ma above. Fans of the Coen Broth­ers will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Josh Brolin, who played a very sim­i­lar char­ac­ter in their Acad­e­my Award-win­ning film, No Coun­try for Old Men. Grant Heslov and Brooke Smith also make appear­ances. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tui­leries: A Short, Slight­ly Twist­ed Film by Joel and Ethan Coen

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

in Literature, Poetry | June 13th, 2012

The great Irish poet William But­ler Yeats was born on this day in 1865. To mark the date we bring you a series of record­ings he made for BBC radio in the final decade of his life.

“I’m going to read my poems with great empha­sis upon their rhythm,” says Yeats in the first seg­ment, record­ed in 1932, “and that may seem strange if you are not used to it. I remem­ber the great Eng­lish poet William Mor­ris com­ing in a rage out of some lec­ture hall, where some­body had recit­ed a pas­sage out of his Sig­urd the Vol­sung. ‘It gave me a dev­il of a lot of trou­ble,’ said Mor­ris, ‘to get that thing into verse!’ It gave me a dev­il of a lot of trou­ble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose.”

Yeats made ten radio broad­casts between 1931 and 1937. In the first read­ing, from 1932, Yeats begins with his famous ear­ly poem, “The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free,” which he once called “my first lyric with any­thing in its rhythm of my own music. ” He recites his verse in a somber tone that con­tem­po­rary poet Sea­mus Heaney once described as an “ele­vat­ed chant”:

The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free

I will arise and go now, and go to Inn­is­free,
And a small cab­in build there, of clay and wat­tles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the hon­ey­bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes drop­ping slow,
Drop­ping from the veils of the morn­ing to where the crick­et sings;
There mid­night’s all a glim­mer, and noon a pur­ple glow,
And evening full of the lin­net’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lap­ping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand by the road­way, or on the pave­ments gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The next poem was writ­ten in 1889, less than a year after “The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free.” “A cou­ple of miles from Inn­is­free,” says Yeats, “no, four or five miles from Inn­is­free, there’s a great rock called Dooney Rock where I had often pic­nicked when a child. And when in my 24th year I made up a poem about a mer­ry fid­dler I called him ‘The Fid­dler of Dooney’ in com­mem­o­ra­tion of that rock and all of those pic­nics.”

The Fid­dler of Dooney

When I play on my fid­dle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kil­var­net,
My broth­er in Moharabuiee.

I passed my broth­er and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sli­go fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sit­ting in state,
He will smile on the three old spir­its,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the mer­ry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the mer­ry love the fid­dle,
And the mer­ry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fid­dler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.

The third poem was record­ed in March of 1934. It was first pub­lished in Yeat­s’s 1899 anthol­o­gy, The Wind Among the Reeds, and tells the sto­ry of an old and weary peas­ant woman:

The Song of the Old Moth­er

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flick­er and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are begin­ning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the match­ing of rib­bons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idle­ness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets fee­ble and cold.

The tape ends with a pair of record­ings from 1937: anoth­er read­ing of “The Lake Isle of Inn­is­free,” fol­lowed by two stan­zas from the 1931 poem “Coole and Bal­lylee.” (Find the com­plete six-stan­za poem here.) The poem was inspired by the grace­ful Gal­way estate of Isabel­la Augus­ta, Lady Gre­go­ry, a co-founder of the Abbey The­atre. The poem was first pub­lished as “Coole Park and Bal­lylee” in the 1932 vol­ume Words for Music Per­haps and Oth­er Poems, but was short­ened to “Coole and Bal­lylee” in the 1933 edi­tion of The Wind­ing Stair and Oth­er Poems.

Coole and Bal­lylee (two stan­zas)

Anoth­er emblem there! That stormy white
But seems a con­cen­tra­tion of the sky;
And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
And in the morn­ing’s gone, no man knows why;
And is so love­ly that it sets to right
What knowl­edge or its lack had set awry,
So arro­gant­ly pure, a child might think
It can be mur­dered with a spot of ink.

Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound
From some­body that toils from chair to chair;
Beloved books that famous hands have bound,
Old Mar­ble heads, old pic­tures every­where;
Great rooms where trav­elled men and chil­dren found
Con­tent or joy; a last inher­i­tor
Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame
Or out of fol­ly into fol­ly came.

The record­ings will be added to the Poet­ry sec­tion in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. You can also lis­ten to a ver­sion of these record­ings on Spo­ti­fy below:

Found: Lost Great Depression Photos Capturing Hard Times on Farms, and in Town

in Education, History, Life, Photography | June 13th, 2012

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion took on the task of “intro­duc­ing Amer­i­ca to Amer­i­cans” through pho­tog­ra­phy. The FSA hired Dorothea Lange, Walk­er Evans, Gor­don Parks and oth­er artists to cap­ture images of ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, specif­i­cal­ly poor farm­ers.

Some of the images are now icon­ic, notably Lange’s image of a des­ti­tute migrant moth­er of sev­en. That image and most oth­ers are cat­a­loged in the col­lec­tions of the Library of Con­gress, but some lan­guished and were for­got­ten. Oth­ers end­ed up in gen­er­al cir­cu­la­tion, so that, in the­o­ry, any­one with a library card could check out an orig­i­nal print.

Recent­ly a pho­tog­ra­phy cura­tor with the New York Pub­lic Library tracked down the miss­ing images—some 1,000 of them—and cre­at­ed a spe­cial online archive where they can final­ly be seen.

Many depict rur­al life: A 91-year-old woman sits in front of her North Car­oli­na cab­in. A work­er takes a break from carv­ing a dirt road into the New Mex­i­co land­scape. A black man in black face pre­pares to per­form in a trav­el­ing med­i­cine show. The chil­dren of migrant fruit pick­ers in Michi­gan sit for­lorn­ly on a truck.

But not all the pho­tographs doc­u­ment the plight of rur­al Amer­i­ca. Some of the col­lec­tion’s most pow­er­ful images are of Amer­i­cans strug­gling in cities. Here two young girls play out­side in a Bal­ti­more slum. Three peo­ple sit out­doors on a Sun­day in New Orleans. And then we cap­ture a scene on the Low­er East Side of New York City.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly Dorothea Lange’s work is among the strongest in this col­lec­tion. One of the most pow­er­ful images comes sev­er­al pages into her work’s archive, so be sure to click through. The sto­ry behind “From Texas ten­ant farmer to Cal­i­for­nia fruit tramp” (the first image above) sums up the era: “1927 made $7000 in cot­ton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 went in still deep­er. 1931 lost every­thing. 1932 hit the road.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based writer. See more of her work at .