Mr. Bristol's Barn: With Excerpts from Mr. Blinn's Diary

by John Szarkowski, John Bigelow Taylor, Gilbert T. Vincent

A century and more ago, the vast majority of Americans lived and worked on farms. From that era date the barn of one Abel Bristol, photographed in this book, and the diary of his contemporary and neighbor, Philo Blinn, also printed here. The two men lived out their days amid the unremarkable circumstances of ordinary farm labor, and precisely in that lies their interest for us today - for they exemplify a way of life in America that has now all but vanished, yet should remain a living part of our heritage.
The finely grained photographs of the barn, which still stands in East Chatham, New York, were taken recently by John Szarkowski, Director Emeritus of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In his images of the barn, he shows this object of craft to have a simple dignity of its own and at the same time a satisfying, complex structure. It is a vestige of a time when such elaborate works of hand labor were so commonplace as to be taken for granted.
Interwoven with the photographs are selections from the neighbor's diary, written as Philo Blinn and his family pursued their daily lives in an age marked by the Civil War. The vivid scenes he recorded are episodic and the daily round of farm work; the birth (and death) of a child who came unexpectedly to her parents late in their lives; moments of meditation and tranquility amid worry over crops and livestock; and, again and again; the diarist's ongoing, silent debate with the local minister's weekly sermons. Through the decades that Blinn chronicled run continuing threads of human interest that make for a lively and often moving reading experience.
The diary and photographs together give a clear-eyed sense of rural life a century ago - its joys, its sorrows, and its mundane realities. They suggest what it meant, in a younger America, to labor on the earth.

72 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

John Szarkowski was an American photographer and curator best known for his role as the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department from 1962 through 1991. “Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless,” he once explained. “But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible.”

Born Thaddeus John Szarkowski on December 18, 1925 in Ashland, WI, he went on receive a degree in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1948. After working as a museum photographer at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, he moved to Buffalo to teach photography. The artist then relocated to Chicago, where he worked on his photobook The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956). After his appointment at MoMA in 1962, Szkarowski would help launch the careers of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston, among several others during his tenure. He also published acclaimed books on the history of photography, including The Photographer’s Eye (1966) and Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (1973).

After retiring from the museum in 1991, Szarkowski resumed his own career in photography. He died on July 7, 2007 in Pittsfield, MA. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.

Reviews

[VerJean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm smitten with old barns. This was a delightful photo journey and the addition of actual diary entries of farm family was wondrous.
Beautiful trip back in time.