CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/6/2024

A shudder of American self-recognition in 'Omen'

Featured spreads are from Omen: Phantasmagoria at the Farm Security Administration Archive. Drawing from approximately 40,000 works of the FSA Photographic Archive (1935–42) at the New York Public Library, and gorgeously printed in the deepest of black inks, this oversized paperback tells the darker version of the American story under the stark terms of injustice. “It is an uncovering of a more or less literal grave, a grave made out of light, to borrow a phrase from the poet Alice Notley. And it is a reanimation of the bodies found there, who are also figures of brightness and shadow. … The horror of Omen is not that this is happening to someone over there. The horror of Omen is that this is happening to me. This picture was already inside me. I can’t get it out.” Photographs are by Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein and Gordon Parks.