Author(s): Jennifer A. Watts

Photography

As a prolific photographer for "House Beautiful", "Better Homes and Gardens", "Architectural Digest", and "Sunset" magazine, Maynard L. Parker was a pioneer in documenting domestic spaces and landscapes for postwar America. His extensively published, sun-kissed brand of photography made him a critical contributor to domestic design culture from the 1940s into the 1960s. Parker's lens revealed the homes and lifestyles of affluent Americans and celebrities, including Judy Garland, Betty Grable, Clark Gable, and Bing Crosby, as well as the interiors, gardens, and built works of Samuel Marx, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Church, and Cliff May, showcasing both the simple and grand aspects of suburban America and offering an alluring template for living in a new consumer age. Lavishly illustrated with over 300 photographs - most unpublished since their initial appearance decades ago - "Maynard L. Parker: Modern Photography and the American Dream" is the first monograph to consider Parker and his work. Essays by leading scholars set Parker's photography against the backdrop of an unprecedented demographic shift, the Cold War, and a suburban society increasingly fixated on consumption.