"This lavishly illustrated book opens a window on this transitional moment in American cultural history: a period of migration from rural, agrarian towns to bustling urban centers, and the rise of mass industry and commerce."
Journal of American History "Imagine Berenice Abbott or Walker Evans in technicolor and you have an idea of the beautiful work in this book."
The ... Read moreNew York Post "[Cushman's] images
landscapes, street scenes, the occasional bathing beauty
gorgeously resurrect a lost time."
Chicago Magazine "Sandweiss takes readers along on a long, meticulously researched, but personable journey through the life, work, and times of this photographer. The images are lovely and offer glimpses into the daily life of small farms, rural towns, and bustling city streets between 1938 and 1969...Readers interested in photography or American social history will enjoy this lovely book."
Library Journal "[The Day in its Color] supplies a fascinating footnote to the history of early color photography...Cushman was at his best in wordlessly illustrating the ambitions and failures of midcentury life through reality checks on his surroundings. If nostalgia rips through most of the book, it is Cushman's obsession with photography that reigns supreme."
Linda Yablonsky, Artnet "Disdained at first by both 'serious amateurs' and professional photographers, the color film called Kodachrome proved a tremendous boon for more casual snap-shooters, people on holiday with family and loved ones. The Day in Its Color focuses on a single remarkable collection of thousands of color slides by a determined Chicago businessman. By tracing the life of one ardent amateur in these strained wartime and postwar years, 1938 to 1969, the book offers a uniquely original perspective, in full and surprisingly compelling Kodak color, into an age at once complacent about itself and terribly confused."
Alan Trachtenberg, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Yale University "Because Charles Cushman was neither an art photographer nor photo-journalist and because so many of the color slides he took in the decades before and after WWII recorded ordinary landscapes and urban views, his work was for many years all but forgotten. Rediscovered, cataloged and now accessible online, it provides a kind of time capsule, an extraordinarily vivid and colorful glimpse of an America that continues to disappear before our very eyes. In this book Eric Sandweiss provides a complete and compelling introduction to Cushman's unlikely career, the times that he lived through, and the spectacular legacy that he left."
Robert Bruegmann, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago Show Less