ART & DESIGN

FEB 28: Photographic Memory

A sweeping history of the photo album as an art form.


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Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography (Aperture, copublished with the Library of Congress), out February 28, presents a sweeping history of the photo album as an art form. Featured are Walker Evans’s photographic journals, which became the basis for the Depression-era classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (left); General George Patton’s personal war photos (including a confidential image of Hitler); and snapshots of John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, and other recognizable faces at the president-elect’s inauguration gala in 1961. Photographic Memory chronicles the broad range of the medium but also begs the question: In the age of Facebook, is the photo album a thing of the past—or simply waiting to be reinvented?

Photo: 28th: Courtesy Of The Library Of Congress And Aperture Foundation