A Shoemaker's Story

A Shoemaker's Story is a brilliant book that fully conveys the richness of historical meaning common photographs can bring to light in the hands of a skillful interpreter. Anthony Lee's tale of multiple encounters among Yankee townspeople and factory owners, Chinese and French Canadian migrant laborers, and itinerant and studio photographers in North Adams, Massachusetts, is full of insight into the confluence of United States labor history, ethnic studies, and visual culture. Beautifully written as well, it will be required, desired, and inspired reading for anyone's list. -- Laura Wexler, Yale University Combining extraordinary archival work, an acute eye for the visual and social logic of photographs, and knowledge of the experiential history of their subjects, Anthony Lee offers a riveting account of the complex uses of nineteenth-century photography. In his readings, the power of images becomes a matter of complex cultural transactions and negotiations, as images themselves are viewed as critical objects for histories of labor, economic life, racial community, and self-representation. This groundbreaking study will influence scholarship for a considerable time to come. -- Sara Blair, author of "Harlem Crossroads" This book is a pleasure. Lee weaves together the many stories that run through these extraordinary photographs with exemplary deftness. Having dug deep in the archives, he cogently reconstructs the social dynamics of a forgotten community and a fascinating historical moment. His vivid tale should appeal to scholars and general readers alike. -- Robin Kelsey, Harvard University Wonderfully innovative and original. Anthony Lee offers a fascinating story that weaves together the history of manufacturing, labor, immigration, and photography. The photograph here becomes a new kind of historical evidence to be mined and untangled, a constellation of competing forces and desires. Beautifully written in remarkably lucid, playful prose. A real pleasure to read. -- Shawn Michelle Smith, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Through his reading of a single photograph taken of Chinese strikebreakers acquired to work in a shoe factory, Lee leads us on a fascinating exploration of the historical circumstances and social relations that gave rise to that photograph. The book shows an exemplary ambition in its methodological attempts to bring together close reading of visual texts, historical analysis, and archival research. An unflaggingly pleasurable read. -- Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University

On a June morning in 1870, seventy-five Chinese immigrants stepped off a train in New England. They threaded their way through a hostile mob and then their new employer lined them up and had them photographed. This work seeks to understand the social forces that brought this photograph into being, and the events it subsequently spawned.On a June morning in 1870, seventy-five Chinese immigrants stepped off a train in the New England factory town of North Adams, Massachusetts, imported as strikebreakers by the local shoe manufacturer. They threaded their way through a hostile mob and then--remarkably--their new employer lined them up along the south wall of his factory and had them photographed as the mob fell silent. So begins A Shoemaker's Story. Anthony Lee seeks to understand the social forces that brought this now-famous photograph into being, and the events and images it subsequently spawned. He traces the rise of photography as a profession and the hopes and experiences of immigrants trying to find their place in the years following the Civil War. He describes the industrialization of the once-traditional craft of shoemaking, and the often violent debates about race, labor, class, and citizenship that industrialization caused. Generously illustrated with many extraordinary photographs, A Shoemaker's Story brings 1870s America to vivid life. Lee's spellbinding narrative interweaves the perspectives of people from very different walks of life--the wealthy factory owner who dared to bring the strikebreakers to New England, the Chinese workers, the local shoemakers' union that did not want them there, the photographers themselves, and the ordinary men and women who viewed and interpreted their images. Combining painstaking research with world-class storytelling, Lee illuminates an important episode in the social history of the United States, and reveals the extent to which photographs can be sites of intense historical struggle.