Village

Village

Torn Movie Poster 1930

FSA

Similar versions of Walker Evans Torn Movie Poster, made on Massachusetts Cape Cod in 1930 and first published in his seminal American Photographs, are found on the covers of two books in this collection: Village (a 1990 University of New Mexico Press reprint of Robert McAlmons 1924 novel) investigates, according to its jacket blurb, “…the quiet desperation of life in a North Dakota Prairie community.”, while in Suspects (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), author David Thomson employs poetic license to track the arc of fictional movie characters lives. That the original Evans photograph can represent these two unrelated topics with equal fidelity is a testament to its graphic power and semiotic complexity.

See 'Multiple Uses' for other books with the same cover image: