These and other questions were asked by the celebrated writer and photographer Wright Morris (1910 – 1998, USA) as early as the 1930s. His photographic oeuvre cannot be considered separately from his authorship. During a guided tour of the exhibition Wright Morris – The Home Place, curator Hinde Haest will talk about how Morris’ work as an author fed into his lesser-known photography, and vice-versa.

_{Wright Morris, Dresser Drawer, Ed’s Place, Norfolk, Nebraska, 1947 © Estate of Wright Morris}

The tour will be centred around Morris’ three photo-text books The Inhabitants (1946), The Home Place (1948), Of God’s Country and My People (1968). These visual novels resulted from Morris’s meanderings of the American countryside in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In his visual novels, images and texts complemented each other. This was highly unusual at a time when the photograph was primarily seen as a recording document.

The exhibition is curated in collaboration with Agnès Sire and produced by the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris.

This exhibition is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, City of Amsterdam, Foam Members, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.