Louis Faurer, New York, NY, 1947 (profile head in El window), Courtesy Deborah Bell Gallery/ Sous Les Etoiles Gallery
Esher Bubley, Coast to Coast, SONJ, 1947, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery/ Sous Les Etoiles Gallery.
In January of 1947, Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) arrived in New York from her native France to begin a four-month speaking tour at colleges across the United States. Over a period of 116 days, she crossed 19 states and 56 cities by trains, cars, and Greyhound buses, immersing herself in the nation’s landscape and keeping a detailed diary of all that she witnessed.
.
First published in France in 1948, America Day by Day shows us America through de Beauvoir’s eyes, giving us a taste of life for the young writer and intellectual just two years before she published her landmark work, The Second Sex.
.
“This is a very photographic book,” says Corinne Tapia, director of Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York. “The writing is so precise. She is determined to tell her truth and what she sees. You can easily point out the fact by the descriptions of the cities: where she is, where she goes, and what she hears.”
.
Tapia first read the book 15 years ago, returning to it periodically and therein discovering a desire all her own: to curate an exhibition of photographs illustrating the world de Beauvoir’s encountered.
.
Read the Full Story at Huck Online
.
Wayne Miller, From ” The Way of Life of the Northern Negro,” Chicago (Afternoon Game at Table 2), 1946-1948 courtesy Stephen Daiter Gallery/ Sous Les Etoiles Gallery.
Fred Lyon, Post & Powell, Union Square, San Francisco, 1947, courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery/ Sous Les Etoiles Gallery.