Jason Edward Hill

Published in New York City between 1940 and 1948, PM Daily was a large circulation Popular Front tabloid newspaper whose editorial independence and sophisticated visual program attracted the participation of many of the day’s most celebrated artists, illustrators and photographers, from Weegee and Ad Reinhardt to Lisette Model and Dr. Seuss. This dissertation evaluates this newspaper’s neglected but crucial intervention into the American artistic and visual culture of the World War II era, situating PM between the more familiar conceptual frames of Life Magazine and The Partisan Review as a signal activation of the technology of mass culture toward recognizably avant-garde ends.