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This book was made possible by a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts (nysca) funding support from the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; and research support from the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

AMERICA RECOVERED
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Actar Publishers, Barcelona & New York

2019

Foreward by Bonnie Honig, with essays
by Jordan H. Carver and Miriam Paeslack
2019. 200 pp., 50 ills.
6.50 x 9 in. / 16.5 x 23.5 cm.
Hardcover
ISBN: English 978-19-45150-93-7

In response to the “Great Recession” of 2008, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an $831 billion financial stimulus package. Over $100 billion of those funds were allocated for “shovel ready” infrastructure maintenance and construction projects. Photographer Chad Ress traveled around the country documenting many of the projects, from the grandiose to the mundane. With Ress’s photographs as an archive of stimulus work, architectural writer Jordan H. Carver analyzes the role of infrastructure in the process of constructing politically active citizens and photography historian Miriam Paeslack places Ress’s photos within the lineage of public works image making. Political theorist Bonnie Honig asks what public things do for us, especially in the years after the crisis. America Recovered reveals the point where abstract political and economic processes manifest themselves in the physical world and what that means in terms of political action and aesthetic practice.

ESSAYS

Bonnie Honig  - Foreward: The Beauty of Public Things
Jordan H. Carver - From the Infrastructural Sublime to Not Interesting Enough
Miriam Paeslack - Taking Stock: Chad Ress’ Photographs of the Recovery Act