The Photography of Max Yavno

By Ben Maddow

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520322851

Ben Maddow

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THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF MAX YAVNO

Contents 1

Contents 1

New York: 1938-1941 O city, cities!

San Francisco: 1947

Jerusalem: October, 1979

Cairo, Egypt: November, 1979

New York: 1938-1941 O city, cities!

We walked in all weathers on the wrinkled hack Of that great lizard, the metropolis; streets were far Between our longing and the window of our loves…

A camera was already wound in our heads:

We had seen the young old women of Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahns tough children in their father’s hats, Dusty windshields of the inner migration.

We were persuaded: Art is a weapon, too

We were drawn back to the arid empires of the West Here the strict labor of the many would support the monotony of the useless; and luxury is got with smiles, false cinema, options, or embezzlement. The camera was Yavno’s window to the world,

And his hero Cartier-Bresson, with that extra eye Tucked under his arm; the marksman of time Freezing his prey in the waters of the darkroom.