Also this issue: 25 Alive Bushfire Theatre gears up for its silver anniversary -- again. -Steve Cohen Strange New World -Susan Hagen Roughing It -Toby Zinman Rock Out -Toby Zinman Philling the Gaps Two new histories of the ballclub of brotherly love. -Andrew Milner

July 18-24, 2002

artpicks

The Art of the Story

A journalist learns that using unconventional means to relay the truth about something is not uncommon, especially when one is also trying to grab an audience's attention on an emotional level. In the 1930s, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans decided that they would take 21 days to put together the "truth" about the social issues facing our country during the Great Depression, not through subjective interpretation but through pure observation. The two moved in with an "average" sharecropper family and documented how they lived. They replaced the more traditional journalistic "family photo and one-page interview" with individual portraits and poetry. They captured the thoughts and problems this family had, not by stating them and comparing them to the rest of the world, but by simply describing what they saw. The result of this unconventional journalistic practice was that a new level was reached in the art of storytelling and photojournalism.

Evans' photos and Agee's prose and documentation from their time in the house will be on display at the Michener Museum starting this week, running through October.

“Walker Evans and James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” opens Sat., July 20, through Oct. 13, James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, 215-340-9800, www.michenerartmuseum.org.

—Morgen Rossmair