Based on the popular and revolutionary PBS multiplatform documentary project, an inspiring and striking photographic portrait that brilliantly captures the tumultuous, historic year that was 2020, offering an intimate look at the heart and soul of our national life and what it means to be an American today, revealed through the stories of ordinary people from sea to shining sea. Everyone has a story . . . In January 2020, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, PBS launched an ambitious national storytelling project, American Portrait, inviting people across the country to participate in a national conversation about what it means to be an American today. The multiplatform experience, including a television series that will air on PBS stations nationwide in January 2021, has created a communal voice through the individual stories of participants—each one a unique stitch in the beautiful, diverse quilt that is America. A vivid yet nuanced snapshot of who we are, this visually striking companion volume features more than 400 entries and photographs, all which began with an answer to a simple cue: My American story started when . . . You don’t know what it’s like to . . . My greatest challenge is . . . The tradition I carry on is . . . I was raised to believe . . . What keeps me up at night is . . . I took a risk when . . . When I step outside my door . . . Most days I feel . . . Told by people of all ages, orientations, and walks of life, these unique stories of joy, adversity, love, sacrifice, grief, sharing, triumph, and grace, centered on the themes of family, work, fun, faith, and community, illuminate the struggles, hopes, dreams, and convictions of Americans today. The more we share with our fellow citizens, the more we can see a real, complex, and fascinating representation of our country that is far richer and deeper than headlines and elections tell us. As intriguing, thoughtful, and distinct as the nation it embodies, American Portrait is a photographic manifestation of Walt Whitman’s immortal words, “I am large. I contain multitudes”—and a vital and ultimately hopeful reminder that what we all share is much greater and enduring than what may divide us.

Neal Schlosburg photographs spontaneous emotions in a formal portrait setting, using a series of photos to create a story... Our disquieting stories and unsettling feelings are often difficult to express to those closest to us. We're afraid of being judged, thought of as less than. Many grow up believing we don't burden another with our difficulties. That's the way I was raised. Internalizing, ignoring, and pretending emotions don't exist affects our daily lives. They impact our temperaments, viewpoints, and relationships with others. In my life, it made me feel disconnected, especially from those closest to me. "My Pictures Tells A Story" is based on a simple premise. This quote by Jill Bolte Taylor says it best. "Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated."Through my images, my storytellers show how safe sharing feelings can be, and how safe sharing your emotions can be. The goal of "My Picture Tells A Story" was to vividly show that sharing emotions with people you trust is safe, healthy, and healing. I created space for my storytellers to share their stories without interruption, and most importantly, without judgment. Like life, their stories are a pallet of emotions. "My Picture Tells A Story", twenty stories by twenty people, a unique portrait study in human emotions...."Professionals have a story to tell with their images. It's rare that any of their work is created from a vacuum. Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark, and so many more, all leave an indelible personal stamp of themselves within each photograph they create. Having this ability to capture an image that comes from their heart, as much as it does from their mind, is a gift. My dear friend Neal Schlosburg has this gift. ...Neal is a "true" photographer; he is as much as part of the photo as the subjects are. The work Neal creates is as much for himself, as it is for his subjects and us viewers. The portraits on the pages of this book underscores this symbiotic relationship Neal has with his art." Jimi Giannatti, former Photo Editor for SPIN Magazine & past Photo Editor-in-Chief of Live Sounds Magazine.

Relates ten-year-old Beth's exciting trip to pre-Civil War New York City with Marmee and Father.

A highly original history of American portraiture that places the experiences of enslaved people at its center This timely and eloquent book tells a new history of American art: how enslaved people mobilized portraiture for acts of defiance. Revisiting the origins of portrait painting in the United States, Jennifer Van Horn reveals how mythologies of whiteness and of nation building erased the aesthetic production of enslaved Americans of African descent and obscured the portrait's importance as a site of resistance. Moving from the wharves of colonial Rhode Island to antebellum Louisiana plantations to South Carolina townhouses during the Civil War, the book illuminates how enslaved people's relationships with portraits also shaped the trajectory of African American art post-emancipation. Van Horn asserts that Black creativity, subjecthood, viewership, and iconoclasm constituted instances of everyday rebellion against systemic oppression. Portraits of Resistance is not only a significant intervention in the fields of American art and history but also an important contribution to the reexamination of racial constructs on which American culture was built.

Meg March is very popular at school and is invited to Mary Howe's fancy picnic. She desperately wants to go, but on the big day, the March parents are visiting friends, and the housekeeper is called away on an emergency. Meg knows she should stay home to watch over her younger sisters--even if it means not going to the picnic. Forgetting her manners, Meg does something that turns the picnic into an unforgettable afternoon.

At a star-studded auction in 1990, a painting was sold for the record-breaking price of $82.5 million. That painting, Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet, has seemed to countless admirers to portray our times as "something bright in spite of its inevitable griefs." This fascinating book reconstructs the painting's journey and becomes a rich story of modernist art and the forces behind the art market. Masterfully evoked are the lives of the thirteen extraordinary people who owned the painting and shaped its history: avant-garde European collectors, pioneering dealers in Paris and Berlin, a brilliant medievalist who acquired it for one of Germany's great museums, and a member of the Nazi elite who sold it after it had been confiscated as a work of "degenerate art." Remarkable and riveting, The Portrait of Dr. Gachet illuminates, in dramatic detail, the dynamics of the art market and of culture in our time.

Beautiful Amy March, the youngest March sister, is a talented artist. Everyone praises her lifelike portraits. The one person she can't draw is herself. So when a photographer's studio opens in town, Amy is thrilled. Now her pretty blond curls and piercing blue eyes can be captured forever in a photograph. A photograph costs quite a bit of money--more than she has, and more than her parents can give her. Amy thinks of a clever way to come up with the money...and soon she has enough. But she decides to spend her savings on a gift for her father--a gift that will warm his heart when he's far away from home, and that ultimately gives Amy an unexpected gift in return.