"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" - Sierra Flynn

“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” was an exceptionally descriptive article (that eventually turned into a book for unknown reasons). Even without the pictures, it would have been very easy to visualize the people described and their exhausting lives. In the preface, it is stated, “The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are co-equal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative” (30). At first, this statement puzzled me (and not just because it contradicts the phrase “a pictures worth a thousand words”). Offhand I could not think of a situation where photographs are not meant to be illustrative. This assertion made me want to continue reading in the hope that I could eventually comprehend what the authors were trying to say. Luckily for me this statement became abundantly clear as I began to read the article. The pictures and text do work together to depict the complex lives of these American people, yet independently they still convey an intriguing story.
When reading the descriptions about the “typical” American people, I felt great compassion for them. However, I realized after I finished the article that I did not feel as much sympathy as I would have expected. The authors of this essay have a very removed point of view. If they had desired, the stories of these people could have been told in a more emotional manner that would have depicted these people as poor, hopeless Americans. I found this quite interesting because this writing came from such an objective point of view, whereas other authors would have most likely exploited the details of the underprivileged to their fullest extent.