Rich Remsberg is a documentary photographer and independent filmmaker who researches photographs and other visual images in his numerous publications. Hard Luck Blues is a remarkable assemblage of photographs of roots musicians and musical images culled from the WPA’s Farm Security Administration photographs. Remsberg obviously had a wealth of excellent images to work with in developing this compilation. The book includes some of the classic imagery portrayed by famous photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, and Walker Evans as well as the work of comparatively lesser known FSA photographers. This remarkable book opens viewers’ eyes to the depth and breadth of musical expression during the WPA era, and Remsberg’s work is a masterful presentation that makes the book read more like an act of exhibit curation than an editorial compilation.

Nicholas Dawidoff’s foreword lays out an excellent overview of the book’s content as he ties the images into the wider vision that FSA administrator Roy Stryker shared with some of the most iconic image-makers of the twentieth century. Remsberg’s own insightful introduction further develops themes outlined by Dawidoff and later commented on by Henry Sapoznik in his afterword. Sapoznik focuses on the connection between WPA folklorists’ research in folk music and the aura of the photographs displayed in Remsberg’s book. He aptly regards the field recordings of the Lomax family as the soundtrack for Remsberg’s volume of images. These three written pieces provide a context for, and even an encomium to, the captivating and vivid photographs that Remsberg presents with minimal captions throughout the book’s nine sections.

These sections are organized by photographs taken in America’s geographic regions. Each section begins with an overview of the historical circumstances for each shooting session and brief descriptions and analyses of various photographs. The book begins with images made in the Southeast and then the Deep South. Remsberg’s curatorial eye takes viewers across the nation by way of Louisiana and the Southwest as we view images made in California, the Northwest, the Midwest, and Chicago. His collection brings us back to the Northeast, the home base for the FSA project. Remsberg’s carefully selected photographs show a wide variety of musicians and musical expressions, and he arranges the book to give viewers a representative sample of the work of photographers and the diversity of musical expression that they portray. This is no mere sampling that strives for inclusivity; rather, it is a carefully developed act of curatorial inspiration that deeply and poignantly creates a visual representation of the era’s soundscape of roots music.

It helps to create a mental picture of various scenes and performance contexts when one reads about blues, gospel, string band music, and other genres of folk music. It is especially interesting to compare how the images in our mind compare to the actual scenes depicted in the book. Marion Post Wolcott’s image, titled "Main Street on Saturday afternoon, Mississippi Delta" (33), for example, is not far from what I envisioned when reading scholarship on blues in Mississippi, and the photographs by Arthur Rothstein and Russell Lee on the page that precedes this scene vividly portray scenes close to what I had imagined when I thought of sharecroppers playing the blues harmonica and diddley bow on the archetypical front porch. I also was interested in how the mental image of street busking that I formed in my mind was accurately reflected in the photographs of numerous WPA artists, including Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Ben Shahn, and others. Other scenes surprised me as I wasn’t expecting to see the highly integrated dance-floor that Jack Delano portrays at Chicago’s Club DeLisa (171), the strong presence of children in Arthur Rothstein’s photograph of a Saturday night dance in Weslaco, Texas (86), or the various photographs of white musicians appearing in blackface throughout the book. A more comprehensive analysis of the photographs is outside the scope of this review, but Remsberg’s introductions and the commentary by Dawidoff and Sapoznik all provide excellent resources for understanding how the photographers’ choices and the editorial directives of the FSA influence ways of reading what the WPA artists termed their "camera fodder."

The title of the book is perhaps a bit misleading as the focus is not solely on the blues. This initial description is nuanced by the subtitle, which clearly explains that the book is about roots music in general, and "blues" references more of the emotional resonance of the times rather than the musical genre. The blues aesthetic of celebrating artistic expression as a resource for overcoming hard times, however, permeates the book’s imagery and its essays. This mood is poignantly evoked in the entranced expressions of musicians and listeners who are present at Cajun fais-do-dos, Mexican-American fiestas, square and country dances, and even in the street performances of Salvation Army bands. Along with the portraits of quotidian forms of musical expression, the book also includes some of the more well-known musicians and scenes that were surprisingly documented by WPA photographers. Russell Lee’s photographs of Count Basie at the Savoy Ballroom and his pictures of Lonnie Johnson performing at a Southside Chicago tavern are especially important images in this respect.

The work of folklorists during the WPA is gaining more scholarly attention. This book is certainly an important contribution to the scholarly literature on folklore and the New Deal. It provides a visual record of an important era, and the research suggests an ongoing influence of New Deal politics upon contemporary folklore study. The social realism of the era is but one strong influence on the aesthetics of the documentary imagery that clearly is evident in the photographs made during fieldwork. The composition of numerous portraits, slice-of-life scenes, street images, depictions of instruments, and other photographs of this era continue to serve as templates for fieldwork photography in the twenty-first century. A direct connection is evoked in the street scenes that Edwin Roskam depicts in his photographs of local gatherings of folk musicians under the soldier’s monument at Provincetown, Massachusetts (186). The performers and the listeners are not identified, but in these images we see the faces of those who were to lead the revival of folk music that was soon to open up following World War II. These musicians, some of whom were even wearing caps and posing in ways that Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan would emulate, are not solely the passive listeners and deceased folkies of a bygone era. Rather, they are the progenitors of a movement that culminated in the establishment of folklore as an American discipline as well as a profession within the public and private sectors. Looking at these exceptional photographs while listening to the music of this era is essential for understanding how the work of WPA folklorists has formed an essential aspect of the discipline and practice of contemporary folklore research.

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[Review length: 1134 words • Review posted on April 2, 2012]