Esther Bubley: On Assignment
In the mid-20th century, Esther Bubley's remarkable photo essays graced the pages of Life and Ladies Home Journal and enriched photographic record projects sponsored by corporations like Standard Oil. Images from her most important assignments are beautifully reproduced in this book, from her earliest work contributing to the files of the Office of War Information in the mid-1940s to a final, unpublished personal endeavor revolving around her pet Dalmatian. Pages of text interspersed throughout tell the story of Bubley's life and help contextualize the pictures. Also included are brief excerpts and illustrations of some of the magazine articles featuring her work, as well as contact sheets and images that weren't used in the final products. Old-fashioned hard work and a knack for making her subjects forget she was around were key to Bubley's success, and she was in demand by a wide variety of clients who sent her all over the world. One after another, her pictures arrest the viewer's eye: the newlywed couple having dinner by lamplight in a sparely furnished Texas farmhouse; the rebellious teenage girl fighting with her parents; the angelic children's choir singing their hearts out in Brooklyn. This elegant tribute, the first in Aperture's new series focusing on "great unknowns," leaves one with few doubts that Bubley could hold her own as a photographer even at a time when it was largely a man's profession.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.