Girls Standing on Lawns by Daniel Handler (review)

Even in the age of selfies, we’ve all seen these old-school images—scratchy black-and-white photos with thin white borders, featuring people standing stiffly outdoors, squinting into the sun. This diminutive, beautifully bound art book, the first of a proposed series, consists of page after page of such photos, almost all of young women standing on lawns as the title indicates, all taken by unknown amateur photographers ranging in date from 1900-1955, and all part of MoMA’s collection housed in the Department of Photography. Accompanying these vernacular photographs are color paintings by Kalman that replicate the stances and subject matter in her distinctive naïve impressionistic style. Handler provides free verse that is both spare and sparse throughout the collection, contextualizing the thematic groupings and offering imaginative insight into what might have motivated the preservation of such frozen moments. The project is interesting and the images thought provoking. However, it rather tardily follows similar projects teens are doing themselves through social media outlets such as Instagram and Snapchat, and in fact Handler’s poetry seems less inspired and more cryptic than one might hope given the rich potential of the visuals. Teens looking for more substantial poetry inspired by vintage photographs would be better served by Cynthia Rylant’s Something Permanent (BCCB 5/94), while younger readers could look to Walter Dean Myers’ Brown Angels (BCCB 10/93). Information about the collection and photo credits are included.