Module 9: Documentary and Photojournalism

W. Eugene Smith

(See notes from film we watched in doc) -humanitarian impulses -struggled working with Life magazine as he spent much more time with his subjects than they wanted; he wanted to truly understand them -driven by socially engaged concepts (country doctor, black midwife, etc.) W. Eugene Smith and his wife, Aileen Mioko Smith, spent the early 1970s on a photo-and-text exposé of the human devastation in Minamata, a small Japanese fishing and farming town, caused by the heedless prosperity of the Chisso chemical firm, which dumped its mercury-laden effluent into their waters. -Members of the Photo League included W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), who once served as its president, and Jerome Liebling (1924-2011), whose two years spent with the league anticipated his lifelong career in humanistic documentary work. -To avoid disclosing information the enemy could use, and because the 1930s' documentary emphasis on individuals and typical days persisted, newspapers and magazines stressed the personal encounter with war far more than in World War I. Stationed in the Pacific, American photographer W. Eugene Smith managed to get so close to the action that he was seriously wounded on the island of Okinawa in 1945. His pictures centered on the physical and emotional experiences of soldiers at the front line (Fig. 9.34).- -W Eugene Smith Gene Smith started off his career as a very precocious teenager getting photographs published from the time either I think it was 16 when World War II came along he wound up ultimately working for Life as a very young man went to the Pacific Theater of the war when we see several of his photographs here Smith was an interesting character if he had been bored of it 15 years earlier he probably would have been a fabulous FSA photographer a documentarian as it was given his time and place he wind up becoming a photojournalist but he's a photojournalist who has such a tremendous connection with his subjects are all the cut of empathy and order the kind of emotional subjective header qualities that made somebody like Dorothy align a terrific photographer he's got all of that and more so he's covering new stories journalistic stories but there's always has very strong human element in Smith's for the photography the left hand side here we have the scene from the Saipan mountains in the the American Advance through the islands of the Pacific I got to the island of Saipan where there was a very pitched battle and one of the things that had gone on as the Americans Advanced from Island to Island the Japanese authorities were telling people that the Americans were coming all kinds of atrocities of things and so they the people wouldn't hit themselves and caves and a natural areas on the island and here we find see were an American Marine has encountered a wounded and dying infant that was found in one of these caves in Saipan Mountains and the delicacy with which the soldier is lifting this fragile little infant body as kind of touching the start of it the contrast between you know the dogface Soldier and this. Fragile infant is really somehow it kind of touching and that's something that you really get in Smith's photography a great deal the right this is him he spent a lot of time on the front line and it kind of made himself one of the soldiers he was just another one of the guys and in fact he was severely injured it his tour of the war ended while he was working on a story about 24 hours in the life of a soldier where he basically tag along with a particular Soldier for a whole day I was so close to the front lines that there was an artillery shell or something exploded very close with 70 to him sending shrapnel into his face and and it could have caused him a lot of serious injuries which wild up then sending him back back home where he convalesced for over a year to recover from his injuries because he insisted on being there being upfront being in the middle of it so this is one of the qualities with Gene Smith another another couple of 4 photographs by Smith 1 from Iwo Jima sticks and stones and bits of human bones this is take it from the American Advance on the island of Iwo Jima which was a very long and protracted battle to finally take control of the Island from the Japanese at again. And this was the image that was actually published in Life Magazine from Iwo Jima of the most prominent image was this one by Smith for reasons that will get it to you in a minute. The more famous pet of image on the left again this idea of this is a Burial at Sea of a dead sailor whose body has been wrapped up in his it gets a few brief words and then he's you're very to see in the war goes on loud Splash again that different kind of strong effective human interest kind of element is very powerful with Smith's photography this is obviously probably win -I mentioned JEugene Smith seriously injured in the Pacific came back and you're was in a rehabilitation hospital for a year recovering from his injuries when he came out the other side of it he continued working for life for a few years it was a very kind of see a lot of friction with the editors at life I think having to do with what I had said about him previously being at heart really sort of the documentarian he would have been a great FSA guy and so he liked spending a lot of time with his subjects getting to know them getting to you don't work with the very comfortably he wasn't interested insert of parachuting into a place spending three days just grabbing the photos that were needed by the editors back in New York and getting out so they they were forever kind of yelling at him about spending too much time spending too much money in a particular place but that the kind of empathy and connection he has with his subjects really comes through its dreams. After the war that Smith really brings that concept of the photo essay that we saw start of initially hatched with the first issue of life with Brooke White's photos of the the worker town by Jason to Fort Peck Dam in Montana that was sort of an accidental photo essay she did really shoot it as such Smith takes that concept of the photo essay and brings it to the level of a high art and this is also where he ran into friction with the editors because he didn't want to submit and get a gift too much control to that he wanted to he's when he was shot a tremendous amount of film and then spent hours and days you do printing in editing everything that he shot and coming up with his story is what he thought was the photo essay they needed to run and so when inevitably things went to press and he had a 12 page photo essay that was suddenly cut the eight pages and they hacked out half of the stuff that he had decided was essential to telling a story he got really upset with them and it wasn't there was a lot of stuff that went back and forth this particular story on the country doctor was one that what is it was one of a series of really classic photo essays by Smith this one following around this doctor in Montana to anyway it's out west as he kind of covers his rounds he spent a month living with this guy and fly fish I would have been here getting to know him really really well which enabled him to get some amazing photographs that are included in the story if you want a page through and have a look at the results here we see the Get a call back in on an emergency because this young girl toddler had been kicked in the head by a horse and the. I received the dramatic photograph of the bottom left of the parents watching very emotionally as the the doctor and his nurse could have work on the on the girl and on the right the close up the large photo of the the doctor break and see where the the stitches in the forehead of the child in his care 3 dramatic presentation of the role of this country doctor as I mentioned Smith had a very tempestuous relationship with his employers at Life by the mid-50s he basically quit from them went on to work on some other really interesting projects there was a major light I mean took thousands of photographs in the city of Pittsburgh for a project that was supposed to be a short kind of assignment and he stayed and and its it was horrific great unfinished magnum opus survey of the city of Pittsburgh in the late 50s moved on to do other things his photographer working independently and then toward the end of his life he was drawn to this place minamata Japan he got to know something about the Japanese and Japan from his time in World War II when he was in the European theater and it's already lived in the Pacific Theater and at that time he was in was already reflecting on the fact that it was just by accident of birth that he was an American otherwise he would be on the other side of the fighting he always had that very kind of powerful humanitarian kind of streak what was going on at 5 you're early 70s in this place in Japan there was a series of medical problems in this community they called the minamata disease children being born with birth defects people going blind eventually it was discovered that this was the result of industrial pollution mercury poisoning food there was a sump pit of industrial plant or we see the the kind of effluent from the plant this is toxic waste that's being dumped out into the environment float down through the water supply at all that the the company responsible for the pollution and the government take responsibility clean it up help the people who've been injured and so on and it was something that came to tremendous Battle of conflict at times and in one of the the kind of pitch sort of Street demonstrations about this Smith himself was injured again this time by the Japanese police patrolling the demonstration who picked him up and slammed him to his head and shoulder first down onto the pavement which actually gave him some pretty serious neck and a brain injury and had a concussion and something is causing tremendous amount of pain for the rest of his life actually suffering through all of that anyway so he took all of this information and created a really kind of beautiful photo essay about this is the industrial pollution of minamata leading up to one of the most famous images of his career which will see next this Photograph by Gene Smith is one of his most touching most intimate and most shocking kind of images this is a mother from the town of minamata whose daughter tomoko had been seriously injured with birth defects because of the the toxic mercury poisoning she was born blind and crippled as you see and basically her mother everyday would bathe her in the traditional Japanese through tub and Smith got to know some other and eventually he asked her for the privilege of being present while she took care of her daughter and bathe her one day so this Photograph re-enacts all the the kind of visual iconic Trope of the pieta you're the dead Christ in the arms of his mother kind of image from Renaissance art I should mention Gene Smith himself was raised Catholic and that would have been very fundamentally influenced by a lot of that kind of iconography and here he's sort of re-enacted it in this really beautiful and touching photograph that should have been caps alates the the love and the tragedy of this situation that minamata seems to be again you can get you can get from this that ultimate idea that you know that Smith is someone who transcended the kind of commercial constraints or at the attempted to anyway the commercial constraints of traditional photojournalism to create really moving human documents that in a lot of ways seem more appropriate for what one would think of as a kind of social interest documentary and practice

Berger, "W. Eugene Smith" (pp. 93-97)

*see notes in book* -devotion to his art almost religious -selfish yet deeply human images -trying to find redemption within tragic world view his mother gave him -need to save world; learned pity from mother

Martha Rosler, "In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)"

*see other notes in doc* -using images of impoverished, etc. is a social issue -audience was comfortably well-off people with political power; appealing to do something -Migrant Mother and Florence Thompson (enabled New Deal programs that help someone like this, but she didn't get a cent) -Sekula discourse situation -later adopting "aesthetic" of documentary caption offering context -classic documentary photography no longer exists in the 80s -limited concept of what documentary could be (for elite classes to "save" lesser than) -made essay at time of Reagan and Thatcher -responds with own photography; photographs without spectacularizing; didn't exploit the person, but paired with social movement -difficulties of humanization of liberal documentary that doesn't address social issues of system -This essay about documentary photography is built around the Bowery, an impoverished neighbourhood in the southern area of New York in the epoch in which Martha Rosler wrote this article. This is a suggested reading for the Project 1 of the course, which discusses about the objectivity of documentary photography and it dawn on me some questions I didn't consider previously about the intention of altruism, and in particular of that kind of photography that allegedly claims amelioration of the bad social conditions of poor (bums) people. As I mentioned above, the starting point for the essay is the Bowery as subject-matter in many photographic works, and the author reflects about the intention of these works that can go from "outraged moral sensitivity" to "slumming spectacle". From there she initiates a travel along documentary photography as genre, stabilising its origins as a medium of representation of social conscience of liberal sensitivity. Rosler suggests as the motivations of social reformists in these early days, represented in photography by the works of Jacob Riis (The making of an American) and in social thought by the books of the activist Margaret Sanger, could be an argument to preserve the class privileges: The reason why photography was so important for the reformist movement is because the power of images over arguments: [..] the force of documentary surely derives in part from the fact that the images might be more decisively unsettling than the arguments enveloping them. The core of the essay touches a sensitive point, as it is the question of victimize the poor people making them subject-matter of documentary photography. The next station in documentary photography, when the motivations of the Reformist movement have disappeared, is characterized by the reasons that lay down behind of some photographic works: exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting. She relates this photographic stream with the liberal movement: She argues that documentary is a kind a way to manage reality for liberal classes, and she resumes in the following motto: It is them, not us. The case of Florence Thompson (the subject of "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange) asks the question about the destiny of subjects of iconic photography, and raises the doubt about the "exploitation" of the subject: "What good is it doing me?" asked Ms.Thompson. he ideas and interests of an informal study group that formed during the mid-1970s in California proved important to a generation looking for direction about photographic practice in general, and documentary projects in particular. Members of this group, including Martha Rosler (b. 1943), Allan Sekula (b. 1951), and Fred Lonidier tD. 1942), emerged as intellectual and visual leaders of a new social documentary. -n particular, Rosler's image-and-text series The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974-75) took a familiar Conceptual art technique and used it to condense notions of documentary that held sway throughout the 1980s. Explaining the series, Rosler wrote that it is "a work of refusal. It is not defhant antihumanism. It is meant as an act of criticism. In her Bowery series, Rosler demonstrated how both language and images are insufficient to a full description of a poor area of New York City where homeless persons gather to drink alcoholic beverages (Fig. 13.3). She did not set out to provoke concern for the plight of those living in the Bowery; instead, she tried to examine the weakness of words and pictures to encompass social realities while puncturing humanist assumptions about documentary photography's ability to contribute to human progress. Beginning in the late 1970s, critical essays on the history and theory of photography by Rosler and Sekula--along with Douglas Crimp, Christopher Phillips, Rosalind Krauss, Abigail Salomon-Godeau, and Sally Stein-hit the field of photographic etudies like a sharp wind. -Martha Rosler's The Bowery in Two lnadequate Descriptive Systems exemplified the critique of realism as well as the suspicion of aesthetic appearances

Gordon Parks

-Got very interested in being a doing his own photographyand spoke to Roy Stryker about it that he was included in the documentary that I asked you to watch.At the time when Parks was just starting out inthe early 40s in Washington DC you have to understand that Washington DC was still a very deeply segregated Cityand Parks what he expressed his interest in going out and doing some photography for.Stryker. - Stryker understood that basic. It would be sort of an obstacle to. I'm to try to get around. Cuz of the segregation of the city said about andyou know Parks learned his lesson but one of the ... things that the situation enable parks to do was hegay.And unique entree. To the lives of African Americans at the time hecould actually be you know.Befriend. Get to know them follow them around. Beat your going to blend in and be part oftheir world as he was photographing them. - Did knights here with her mom and her broom. Government offices in the city. Losing here against the backdrop of an American. Braids and he called it. Gothic witch. Brilliant Riff on 35th. - So if you go to the next slide you'll seethat. So Grant Wood's American Gothic from 1930s you see here has the same. Basic. Formal kind of planer in a presentation.Can a half. - Of the figure so the Pitchfork now we've got the.And the Grant Wood painting itself was a product. A very major. Regionalist movement. - It's Parks is of course ironically reflecting on American Gothicas a kind of. White phenomenon this is what Midwestern White America look likeas opposed to. His remake of it with Ella ...Watson here. Parks continued. - 1 iconic photograph of Ella Watson he actually followed herhome and that's a c. Life was like. Need a holster to Photo Story out of it shewas. And we see your view of her home here withthese children that she's. Sing and that with a photograph of her parents settingup a whole kind of femme. Relationships for her and. - I mean it is very approachable it's for me. He's almost a fly on the wall. Life here. - And here we see her heading off for her nightshift job leaving for work at 4:30. Everybody's going to be leaving the offices at 5 shewould come in to do the. - And again if there's a number of photographs in thiswhole series following her around in a getting food from takeout place in the neighborhood just her sort of dayto day life. Black I think it there there would have not beenthe sort of level of kind of intimacy. -became significant photojournalist -Narrator: BACN WASHINGTON, STRYKER UNDERSTOOD THAT THE AMERIN LANDSCAPE WAS QUICKLY CHANGING AND THAT HIS TIME WAS RUNNING OUT TO COMPLETE THE FILE. >> SO WHEN RICHARD WRIGHT APPROACHED THE AGENCY ABOUT A BOOK ON THE BLACK MIGRATION NORTHWARD IN 1940, ROY WAS GLAD TO GET INVOLVED IN THIS. >> Narrator: LEE, EDWIN ROSSKAM, AMD JACK DELANO WEE SENT TO CHICAGO WITH RICHARD WRIGHT TO WITNESS THE ARRIVAL OF THOUSANDS OF DISPLACED SOUTHERN BLACKS. >> WHEN THEY GET TO CHICAGO WHAT DO THEY FIND? THEY FIND VERY FEW JOBS, THEY FIND COLD WATER WALK UP FLATS THAT WERE VERY CROWDED AND SO IT'S A VERY LIMITED VICTORY THERE THAT THEY'RE FINDING, AND RICHARD WRIGHT IS VERY HONEST ABOUT THIS, AND THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE VERY HONEST ABOUT THIS. >> Narrator: GORDON PARKS WAS IN CHICAGO AT THE TIME PHOTOGRAPHING FOR HIMSELF, BUT WITH A SIMILAR AGENDA. >> I BECAME INTEREST IN THE POVERTY I SAW ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO AMONGST THE BLACKS MAINLY. AND I CONTACTED STRYKER RIGHT AWAY. HE DIDN'T WANT TO TAKE ME ON MAINLY BECAUSE IT WAS AN ALL-SOUTHERN LABORATORY, AND HE WAS AFRAID THAT I WAS GOING TO HAVE ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS. THEN BILLY HAGGARD OF THE ROSENWALD FUND WENT TO SEE HIM AND SAID "LOOK, HE CAN TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF." SO STRYKER SAYS "WELL, IF HE CAN PROVE HIMSELF AS A GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER, I'M SURE THAT THE LAB WON'T FORGET THAT HE IS BLACK." I NEVER HAD ANY TROUBLE WITH THE LAB, FRANKLY. >> Narrator: BUT HIS EXPERIENCE ON THE STREETSF WASHINGTON DC WAS VERY DIFFERENT. >> I THOUGHT WASHINGTON DC SHOULD BE THE SEAT OF DEMOCRACY, THAT IF THERE'S ANY PLACE WHERE PEOPLE WERE TREATED JUSTLY IT WOULD BE WASHINGTON, AND THAT WOULD BE RATHER NAIVE I SUPPOSE. >> Narrator: STRYKER ENCOURAGED HIM TO USE HIS CAMERA TO SOMEHOW PUT A FACE ON RACISM AND INJUSTICE. >> HE SAID "BUT YOU JUST CAN'T PHOTOGRAPH A BIGGOT AD WRITE BIGGOT BENEATH HIS PICTURE BECAUSE BIGGOT'S HAE A WAY OF LOOKIN LIKE ANYBODY ELSE. SOMETIMES THEY LOOK A LOT BETTER." >> Narrator: STRYKER POINTED OUT A CHARWOMAN CLEANING THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES ONE NIGHT, AND ELLA WATSON AND HER FAMILY SOON BECAME THE FOCUS OF PARK'S FIRST ESSAY. >> YOU KNOW, IT WAS WHAT I WAS FEELING, AND THERE WAS SOME ANGER, YOU KNOW, INSIDE. I DID IT WITH A SUBTLETY. IT WAS AN INDICTMENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. I SHOWED THEM TO STRYKER TWO DAYS LATER. HE SMILES, HE SAYS "WELL, YOU'VE GOT THE IDEA BUT YOU'RE GOING TO GET US ALL FIRED." AND I THOUGHT THAT THAT PICTURE HAD BEEN DESTROYED AND TAKEN OUT OF THE FILES. IT WAS THE FIRST PICTURE I DID THERE, REALLY MY FIRST PROFESSIONAL PICTURE, AND IT'S BECOME THE ICON OF MY CAREER, YOU KNOW, AND I CAN GIVE STYKER CREDIT SOME HOW OR ANOTHER INSPIRING ME TO DO IT. >> IT WASN'T TODAY. IT WAS A DIFFERENT WORLD, AND WHAT ROY DID DO WAS TO USE AS MANY OF THESE PICTURES AS HE COULD, WHICH WASN'T VERY MANY, BUT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PICTURES DID STAY IN THE FILE, BECAUSE HE KNEW SOONER OR LATER AMERICA WOULD BE READY TO LOOK AT THIS. -Parks came to Washington, D.C, on a prestigious fellowship, which had been held by other African Americans, such as Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) and James Baldwin (1924-1987), who wrote about the American South and the black experience Parks began by photographing the life and work of Ella Watson, who cleaned the agency's office (Fig. 9.1) Parks was eventually hired by Life magazine, where he photographed the tumultuous black power movement in the United States. He added filmmaking to his repertoire, and directed the perennial favorite, Shaft (197 1), about the adventures of a cool black private eye in Harlem.

Minamata

-Minamata disease, sometimes referred to as Chisso-Minamata disease, is a neurological disease caused by severe mercury poisoning -image by W. Eugene Smith We found minamata to be both a fishing Village inthe one company industrial city in the key usual District of Japan. It is also the basic setting for Ana start aconfrontation. The victims of the minamata disease. Against the Chisel Corporation a company officially declared by the governmentdoes having caused the disease through Mercury pollution. - We first arrived in minamata.Early September. -We talked about a different kind of photograph.And it was going to be taken in the bath.And we ask the mother. You know how she gave him a call back.And at what time we should come back. -For the mother it was her work to it washer telling the world about her since her child. ... Make sure he's one image which I would say touched/ Center of using Smith's Consciousness it would be the ...image of the pieta. When the mother Mary holdsthe body of the Dead Christ across her knees. ... The compassion and the sense of tragedy. - She's inthat image. And the sense of redemption which is ... that image. He wasn't aiming to show in 08.He was trying to show drama flyff. She knew before taking a photograph chemical in the bath that thiswas going to be something that would soar. -Minamata photographs appeared in Life Magazine I looked at itand I cried you know I cried and not enjoyed ... I cried in pain I was devastated I mean Ilooked at and I say. I said death from a pipe which isn't what wewrote or or just the way it was written and it was so different from the reality that I knewyou know that was minamata or the way I felt ..

Robert Capa

-Next we'll turn our attention to Robert Capa another majorfigure in the development of photo journalist. His original name actually was.Andrea Friedman he was born in hungry hungry and movedin the 30s to Paris.Where he connected with this woman Gerda Taro the twoof them were lovers and work together he started photographing ... -with the two of them were photographing.Various things and then Taro would take there. Pictures to the magazine editors. And they invented this character of Robert CAPA.Fictitious American mysterious photography. Who they claimed was the author of the photos asa kind of marketing device and that actually help them ...sell more pictures. -So they started working under this kind. Common.Pseudonym of Robert CAPA. And then when the Spanish Civil War broke out in1936. -The two of them travel to Spain and both ofthem were making photographs and sending them back the image ...of the left the death of a loyalist Soldier isbasically the photograph that sort of made kappas career we ...see you at 7 that the Spanish Civil War therewere the loyalists.People loyal to the popular front government that was inplace the time the opposition forces were led by. General Franco who led fascists to try to overthrow thatgovernment that was the Civil War. So this is a loyalist Soldier somebody on the sideof the Spanish Republic. We see you at 7 that the Spanish Civil War they were the Loyalists people loyal to the popular front government that was in place at the time the opposition forces were led by General Franco who led fascists to try to overthrow the government and that was the Civil War that was going on so this is a loyalist Soldier so they on the side of the Spanish Republic who we see apparently as he is being he's just been shot that he's in the process of falling throat back through his gun back behind him as he falls dead so it's action picture Cut Above the technical capacities of Photography were such that this was possible though to photograph things in action like this as opposed to Extreme Air call Rodger Fenton's photographs of the Crimean War which were all very static because he was still using the wet play process capitalize shooting frequently with a 35 millimeter camera which was a fairly new innovation head really just started getting Market in the twenties and then by the 30s it became something that a lot of other girls were using because it was light weight and relatively quick and easy to use so anyway so the death of the line was getting back to that by Kappa was published in magazines around the world as it's one of the kind of signature images of this conflict in Spanish although it's been the subject of a lot of discussion in the time since they've been periodically allegations that it was actually not caught in this moment when the guy was being shot dead but rather was a staged photograph somehow hard to say if you can look up that debate yourself one of the things with photojournalism in particular is that it would even documentary that there's a lot more staging then it's typically discussed or assumed by a lot of people -these photos magazines were a new phenomenon again they were born in Germany and in France in the twenties they were Publications that we really could a photo driven though there have been changes improvements to the technology for printing photographs on glossier paper Printing higher-definition much better images than those that had been published move very grainy sort of fashion and newspapers up to that point there had been an innovation in presses presses which could handle high-volume printing of these nice photo layouts and so on and so on Europe in the twenties they invented the idea of the kind of image driven magazine these new photo magazines which would be the model for Life magazine in the US when it finally arrived in 1936 so it was making photographs for these sorts of Publications that Kappa and Taro started out the existence of these Publications called into being a whole new generation of photographers who were shooting specifically for this kind of thing so they're covering news of the day they're covering human interest stories they're covering of a whole range of things but this gives you a sense of where these photo magazines were coming from in Europe as I mentioned a Kappa wild up eventually getting accreditation with Life Magazine from the US during World War II and on D-Day in fact June 6th 1944 he was on one of the transport boats that arrived in Normandy and the first wave of D-Day we see a photograph of him here at the top two opposing before they set off on the bottom one of a series of about a dozen images that he went up bringing back with him she see let me hear shooting with 35 mm camera and obviously was shot under really terrific terrific Lee stressful conditions incoming fire everything's kind of blurry in fact if you seen the opening of Saving Private Ryan Steven Spielberg was directly inspired by these caps photographs to create the cinematography of that opening sequence of the name of the troops heading the Normandy beaches there's some other kind of controversy photographic we speak about these things there was a story that was long told and retold about how Kappa had taken are gone over with one of the the land and crafts take shot a bunch of images got back on you got himself back in one piece back to England where his films were then hurried up to the lab of Life magazine in London to be processed and the person processing the film's supposedly as The Story Goes put them all through the developer and the fixer and so on and then hung them in a drying cabinet but set the thing on too high and so all but a handful of the crafts were destroyed by excessive heat in the drying cabinet there's been some more recent work within the last 10 years or so of people having look at the story and figuring out that it's actually sort of false that in fact Kappa actually brought back less than you like a half a roll of film and its entirety is what is believed and honestly I don't think too badly of him for that I mean I can only imagine what the conditions were like trying to shoot and the first wave of D-Day when you do bullets flying everywhere and dead bodies and everything else happening anyway so it doesn't what if the major photojournalist for life was -One of the twentieth century's most famous war photographs, Death of a Loyalist Soldier (Fig. 9.32), was taken by Hungarian- born photographer Robert Capa (1913-1954) before World War II formally began. This moment-of-death image purportedly shows an incident during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), a conflict between a coalition of leftists called loyalists and the fascists, led by Nazi sympathizer General Francisco Franco. The war inflamed much debate in Europe and America. However, stories that the image was not made by Capa, or that the death was staged were rumored immediately after World War II, and came to wide public inspection in Phillip Knightley's 1975 book The First Casualty. The issue and its evidence have been passionately discussed ever since. In 2008, the existence of three makeshift suitcases belonging to Capa was made public. They contained an extensive cache of Capa's negatives, as well as those by Gerda Taro(1910-1937), his professional and personal partner, and by David Seymour (1911-1956), known as Chim, who also photographed the Spanish Civil War. Historians hoped that the restoration of this find would locate the before and after shots of the long- disputed famous photograph. But in early 2009, when the negatives were scanned, no images were found to have been taken the day the Loyalist photograph was made. Part of the controversy has to do with Capa's professional and popular reputation. His statement that "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough became the dictum for subsequent generations of war and adventure photographers. Less well known, but still a guideline for photographers, photo- editors, and the public, was his observation on the slight blur in Death of a Loyalist Soldier: "if you want to get good action shots, they mustn't be in true focus. If your hand trembles a little, then you get a fine action shot" Ironically, another of Capa's celebrated images was also blurred-but by accident (Fig. 9.33). -n the postwar phase of the age of mechanical reproduction, iconic images have often been greeted with suspicion. Almost a century earlier, Alexander Gardner could openly describe his staging of Home ofa Rebel Sharpshooter (see Fig. 4.17). By contrast, war photographers such as Capa and Rosenthal were unable to deflect doubts that anyone can be lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to make such powerful and well-composed symbols. The war years had seen photography exploited to an unprecedented extent by government and the nilitary on both sides to control public opinion. Prized for its contribution to uniting nations during the war, photography was far less certain of its role in the postwar world.

Margaret Bourke-White

-Photographer we're going to look at here is Margaret bourke-white. -She's a fascinating character by every stretch of the imaginationshe actually started her training early as she had to. Spend some time in the Clarence white school thatwe mentioned back when you were talking about pictorialism so ...she did some of that training in the twenties originallyshe went to college she wanted to be a herpetologist ...she loves snakes and lizards and things but eventually decided.Turn her hand to photography. - She when she made that decision she was working inCleveland Ohio where she was making a living doing basically ... photographs of.Landscape architecture things to Inlet Landscaping that people have done. Documenting that stuff for local practitioners she got fascinated withheavy industry and in Cleveland that meant the steel industry ... -so she. Was trying to solve their the really difficult technical problemhow do you make a photograph of the inside of ... a steel mill. Is this massive contrast between the Pitch Black Sabbath cover. Interior of the plant and then you've got this giantvessel of molten steel that's your glowing red. Add eventually she did kind of need. -Figure out how to how to make full effect ofphotographs of the inside of the steel mill in the ... late twenties which then launched her into a career shouldhave launched the entire practice of industrial photography. Which became a big thing in. The second half of the 1920s and into the 30sas these corporations who were running these big factories and ... so on started publishing more and more elaborate and Illustratedannual reports and you know kind of creating soda Public ... Image for their companies using photography.Quite prominently. -And so the kinds of that this kind of abstracted. View of is it this kind of very bad asmodern as fat. Beautiful kind of Photography that bourke-white was doing.Very highly prized for that kind of practice -and infact in 1929.Bourke- white got an invitation from Henry Luce who had previouslystarted the magazine time in the twenties and it become ...up and coming back. - Media magnate of the time Henry Luce l u c Loose invited her to come to New York to bethe first official staff photographer on a new magazine that ... he was starting that was called Fortune. -So exist in the business magazine. So they so the time. Company was looking to launch this new magazine was goingto focus on business and they wanted to. Use a lot of images and play up imagery sothese Power blades on the left of the Oliver chilled ...plow company these were from a story that Brooke Whitedid for fortune. - Where again she's making the products of Industry look sleekand either they the kind of beauty of the machine ... some of the same aesthetic ideas that Paul strand. Had been playing around with a few years earlier butthe issue she had this kind of terrific eye for ... composition. -And understanding how to use kind of abstract form onewants to think a little bit possibly of her very ...early training and with Clarence White.Having something of an imprint anyway so she moved toNew York where she then set up her own commercial ...photography studio. All the 64th floor of the Chrysler Building. Or where the Gargoyles are and what we see onthe right is a photograph is basically a publicity photograph. For her of herself.Made by her darkroom guy Oscar Grosvenor. - Equate perched out on one of the Gargoyles with hercamera.Looking for a bowl.One wonders what exactly it is that she's photographing outthere but that the whole purpose of this Photograph was ... basically as a publicity photograph for Brooke Whitehurst. - She relentlessly pursued her own. Kind of personal fan. Happy that that was sort of. Made her a thing.Getting getting publicity for herself but it also worked hand-in-glovewith what was going on with the loose media Empire Henry Luce realized what an asset she was at fortuneand then a few years later when he started Life Magazine the first issue came out in 1936 as we'llsee which featured photographs by.Photograph by Brooke White on the cover of the veryfirst Life Magazine. -Time Life Corporation of the time Corporation spent a lotof time and energy cultivating. - The celebrity of just a handful of its many manyphotographers and she was one of the lead ones when the leave cases there. - Because it was a way of promoting their corporate productso there was a very symbiotic relationship she had. With her corporate sponsors. - And so in the run-up to the first issue ofLife magazine they sent the others sent Margaret bourke-white out ... to this place in Montana Fort Peck Dam this wasa new kind of New Deal project to build a hydroelectric Dam out in Montana and they sent her outabsolutely knowing she would bring back Beautiful images like these that we're seeing on this page.These kind of made a Monumental lising images of.Industrial site. -Again she's got this beautiful eye for composition and forkind of abstract structure. Of of the the image as she's covering the storyof the building of this day.And in fact the image of the left.Quick to get through to the next slide you'll seewhy lines up on the cover of the very first ...issue of. What the editors of Life didn't anticipate.Was that Brooke white wood.Find herself in this kind of instant Community there's asmall City basically of all the workers who had been ...brought this remote location to build the dam. -Who made a sort of instant City.And she actually. Cover the story of the social life in the endthe people. I love in this kind of.nteresting situation and that the sum of the editorial noteseditor's note the beginning of this first issue of life ain't they comment on the fact that they were sortof surprised to see something besides these kind of wonderful industrial kind of images that they expected from her andthey got a whole story out of her coverage.How these people spend their Saturday night I got 10,000Montana relief workers make whoopie on Saturday night which became ... one of the first was the first real photo essay. In Life Magazine published in an American Magazine. -Now.Bourke-white hadn't entirely thought of it as. A full third of editorial spread she was basically toresponding to the environment that she found herself in but the editors at life then converted it into what wecall a photo essay. -Photo essays a really spring out of this kind ofcommercial Magazine contact.And basically it's a kind of a story that's toldlargely through photographs that the photographs kind of consume more ...of the page than the text you'll have a bitof descriptive text some captions and so on but the ...stories really carry. By way of a series of photographs and so isyou page through the next couple of slides you will ...see how this played out in. Life Magazine with these images by Burke. -return to Margaret bourke-white she continued her really Stellar career as a photojournalist terrible words she was in fact the first woman War correspondent accredited to the American forces in World War II they designed the war correspondence uniform that woman Woman's Work as far as uniform for her she was one of a number of women actually who served as your reporters and War correspondents and photographers even during World War II she basically covered things in Europe and England she made a brief passed through Northern Africa and then went back to Europe Again cover things that France and Germany and so she was among other things as you see here one of the First photographers at buchenwald concentration camp producing this now very famous image of survivors from the camp at the time of deliberation actually it's next week the 27th of April I forget what I was saying so this image of the survivors pressed up against the barbed wire fence has become kind of an iconic image in histories of the Holocaust although you might be surprised to know that this was not the only image of survivors against a fence that Brooke White took and in fact this image that this now famous image was actually not very well-known until about 1960 when it was used as a cover for a Holocaust by the writer Primo Levi By the writer Primo Levi at which point that's when it became sort of iconic for people the next title show you how Brooke White was approaching her subjects here in the aftermath of the liberation of the stuff camp as a photojournalist as a professional the practice of photojournalism isn't just the business of taking terrific photographs it's also in the when you're working with a publication like Life magazine or whatever when you're providing material that the picture editors and the others the staff of the magazine will be able to use as they choose and so we have two different pictures both taking a poo Cobalt the both by bourke-white both of survivors the image of the left where we have these sort of relatively older prisoners and they're very kind of sad and pathetic he was the kind of like leaning on hanging on the barbed wire fence they look very uncertain you know the kidneys are people who've been through the harrowing of Hell basically the picture of the right by contrast is a group of much younger survivors young people look positively Overjoyed as you expect actually they might in the event of the liberation of this camp this means that they're going to get out but they aren't stuck in this place that I could have died there they're going to get the actually get to escape and leave and so they they look very happy and almost joyful about the prospect of get the end of this this horrible situation for themselves I showed these photographs what both of these to someone wants to know the tremendous somebody who'd only known that the one on the left I said what you know there's a second photograph that she took in here it is and he was sort of took umbrage at it almost as though like why why would you do that but it seems you don't it doesn't seem to show the right reverence for the Holocaust or something but you have to understand that the whole idea of a tragedy like the Holocaust is one that has a history of its own in terms of what people new and when and then in the aftermath of it as after the liberation of the camps we get to see various versions of that story are told and the images that were produced for used toward that end they were used a particular sorts of ways and so we have a particular kind of narrative of the Holocaust that we've kind of imbibed culturally now for a number of decades as it's developed which wants to look at it a photograph like the one on the right as though it's some kind of horrible thing to think about people being happy in the situation when in fact it is I think actually quite natural and normal and what bourke-white was doing was providing a variety of kinds of images so that someone after the fact and not her would be able to pick and choose and construct some kind of a story out of it and that is natural is what photojournalism is about so is contrast to whites photographs from Phuket bold I would have bring here some images by Lee Miller -Margaret Bourke-White -By the time she was in her mid-twenties, Margaret Bourke- White (1904-1971) was in the news. Such captions as "This daring camera girl scales skyscrapers for art"20 show the press's infatuation with a woman who climbed out on to the high steel frame of the Chrysler Building to record its construction, stood on the steel-mill floor amidst flying sparks to photograph a ladle full of molten metal, and shot pictures in remote Canadian logging camps where the temperature went below minus 20 degrees. Bourke-White loved being a celebrity-she even coordinated her camera clothes to match her designer outfits. At the same time, though, she determinedly moved from assignment to assignment, for Fortune magazine and then for Life magazine, often suggesting her own themes and subjects. Her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam in Montana, then the world's largest earth-flled dam, introduced the Ảmerican public to the first issue of Life magazine on November 23, 1936 (Fig. 9.9). She not only had the cover; she wrote and illustrated the lead article, demonstrating that her ability to find powerful symbols of industrialization easily converted to revealing how people lived in places like the boom town near the dam. Bourke- White is most frequently remembered for her photographs, but she was also the author or co-author of about a dozen books recounting her adventures and imparting her convictions about social inequality. In the Soviet Union, she photographed the new industrial town of Magnitogorsk, offering a paean of praise to machines and the people who made them work. With Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987), author of steamy southern poverty stories such as Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933), she chronicled the impoverished lives of sharecroppers in You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), one of the first books to show this kind of imagery in America. The book proved so popular that a less expensive paperback version was issued the same year. Other editions followed. In the book, she and Caldwell contrived dialogue to accompany the images, a deed still debated by those who believe that documentary work must record exactly what people have to say for themselves. During World War II, Bourke-White photographed German bombs falling on Moscow, was the first woman to fly a combat mission, and sent back raw, painful photographs from the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. Also, she insisted on recording the contributions of the so-called "buffalo soldiers," military units composed of all-black troops. After the war, she photographed Mahatma Gandhis attempts to gain independence for India, the punishing lives of black gold-miners in South Africa, and guerrilla warfare in Korea. At age forty-nine, her career waned, cut short by Parkinson's disease, which she fought for twenty years with the same courage that she deployed in the course of dangerous assignments. -The Photo League offered lectures, classes, and cooperative ventures. While working for Fortune magazine, Margaret Bourke-White and Berenice Abbott attended meetings of the New York branch -When the war broke out in Europe in 1939, correspondents and photographers were sent there, sponsored by publications and photo agencies. As in World War I, war photography was censored. For example, Bourke-White's images were often printed as contact sheets (rows of small, negative-size images on photographic paper) and reviewed by military censors before being sent to Life magazine. Some photographs were conveyed by radio transmission, but most, with captions written by the photographer, were physically transported by the military

Farm Security Administration

-the whole point of it was to try and bring back photographs that wouldshow people what real life was like. In.These places for for these impoverished -All these farmworkers and that ultimately it would enable thegovernment to create programs and do things that. -One thing I would like to mention is that becauseall of this work done by the FSA was what ... we call work for hire. Meaning that the photographer signed a contract to accept asalary and all the photographs that they produced were then.Have you made the property the intellectual property of theAmerican government so the photographers hold no help no copier.Got no Residuals are no other payments other than the salary thatthey are making for the government for these images but ... as a result they all the resulting images. Basically.Put in the Library of Congress -THE FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION -Initiated in 1935, the Resettlement Administration (R.A.) was among President Roosevelt's efforts to fight the Depression. It was an umbrella agency, charged with coordinating the various rural relief efforts in government departments, including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The agency oversaw loans, flood control, migrant camps, and agricultural education. As its name implies, one of the R.A.s prominent initiatives was to move distressed farmers into more economically viable service and industrial work. The mission of the R.A., like many of the New Deal agencies, was regularly questioned by conservatives who felt that direct, planned government intervention into the economy and the daily lives of citizens was un-American, or worse, crypto-socialist. In 1937, the R.A. was subsumed into the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Farm Security Administration (FS.A.). Roy Stryker (1893-1976), who supervised the photographic activity of the R.A., continued with the FS.A., directing what was officially known as the "Historičal Section- Photographic." His job remained much the samne: he was to gather photographic evidence of the agency's good works and transmit these images to the press. Střyker's background as a photo editor consisted solely of his efforts to find illustrations for the textbook American Economic Life and the Means of its Improvement (1925), written by his mentor Columbia University professor Rexford Tugwell. When Tugwell moved to Washington to head the R.A., Stryker went with him. Some scholars argue that the orchestration of public opinion through the mass media practiced by the ES.A. and other New Deal programs parallels the activities of experimental photographers in the early years of the Soviet Union. Certainly the United States and the Soviet Union both envisioned industrial expansion as crucial to future prosperity. But the R.A/ ES.A. did not financially support revolutionary departures from visual-or political-conventions, as did the Soviet Union. In fact, the United States government feared socialist connotations, and abstained from calling their efforts propaganda, preferring instead the word "publicity" The R.A./ES.A. photographers were heir to an understanding of documentary that revolved around emotionally persuasive, stylized depictions of symbolic images. However much they asserted the hard reality of their pictures, they were no more averse to invoking religious imagery than was Lewis Hine. Indeed, the photographs that themselves have become part of American history, such as Arthur Rothstein's Fleeing a Dust Storm (see Fig. 9.5) or Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (see Fig. 9.3), elicited biblical associations of wandering in the desert or the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus. -Alhough some photographs were taken before the R.A. work, the images are collectively known as the Farm Security Administration photographs. -American film and photography entered an age of documentary tice during the Great Depression. Photographs of the conditions of the poor and the efforts to help them became central to photojournalisnm. The clear-eyed, subject-oriented style favored by the Farm Security Administration became ascendant in newspapers and magazines, as did the photo-essay dedicated to a single theme. Iconic images, such as Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (see Fig. 9.3), outlived their original circumstances and remain touchstones in American culture.

Ella Watson

At the time when Parks was just starting out inthe early 40s in Washington DC you have to understand that Washington DC was still a very deeply segregated Cityand Parks what he expressed his interest in going out and doing some photography for.Stryker. - Stryker understood that basic. It would be sort of an obstacle to. I'm to try to get around. Cuz of the segregation of the city said about andyou know Parks learned his lesson but one of the ... things that the situation enable parks to do was hegay.And unique entree. To the lives of African Americans at the time hecould actually be you know.Befriend. Get to know them follow them around. Beat your going to blend in and be part oftheir world as he was photographing them. - Did knights here with her mom and her broom. Government offices in the city. Losing here against the backdrop of an American. Braids and he called it. Gothic witch. Brilliant Riff on 35th. - So if you go to the next slide you'll seethat. So Grant Wood's American Gothic from 1930s you see here has the same. Basic. Formal kind of planer in a presentation.Can a half. - Of the figure so the Pitchfork now we've got the.And the Grant Wood painting itself was a product. A very major. Regionalist movement. - It's Parks is of course ironically reflecting on American Gothicas a kind of. White phenomenon this is what Midwestern White America look likeas opposed to. His remake of it with Ella ...Watson here. Parks continued. - 1 iconic photograph of Ella Watson he actually followed herhome and that's a c. Life was like. Need a holster to Photo Story out of it shewas. And we see your view of her home here withthese children that she's. Sing and that with a photograph of her parents settingup a whole kind of femme. Relationships for her and. - I mean it is very approachable it's for me. He's almost a fly on the wall. Life here. - And here we see her heading off for her nightshift job leaving for work at 4:30. Everybody's going to be leaving the offices at 5 shewould come in to do the. - And again if there's a number of photographs in thiswhole series following her around in a getting food from takeout place in the neighborhood just her sort of dayto day life. Black I think it there there would have not beenthe sort of level of kind of intimacy. -STRYKER POINTED OUT A CHARWOMAN CLEANING THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES ONE NIGHT, AND ELLA WATSON AND HER FAMILY SOON BECAME THE FOCUS OF PARK'S FIRST ESSAY. >> YOU KNOW, IT WAS WHAT I WAS FEELING, AND THERE WAS SOME ANGER, YOU KNOW, INSIDE. I DID IT WITH A SUBTLETY. IT WAS AN INDICTMENT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. I SHOWED THEM TO STRYKER TWO DAYS LATER. HE SMILES, HE SAYS "WELL, YOU'VE GOT THE IDEA BUT YOU'RE GOING TO GET US ALL FIRED." AND I THOUGHT THAT THAT PICTURE HAD BEEN DESTROYED AND TAKEN OUT OF THE FILES. IT WAS THE FIRST PICTURE I DID THERE, REALLY MY FIRST PROFESSIONAL PICTURE, AND IT'S BECOME THE ICON OF MY CAREER, YOU KNOW, AND I CAN GIVE STYKER CREDIT SOME HOW OR ANOTHER INSPIRING ME TO DO IT. >> IT WASN'T TODAY. IT WAS A DIFFERENT WORLD, AND WHAT ROY DID DO WAS TO USE AS MANY OF THESE PICTURES AS HE COULD, WHICH WASN'T VERY MANY, BUT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PICTURES DID STAY IN THE FILE, BECAUSE HE KNEW SOONER OR LATER AMERICA WOULD BE READY TO LOOK AT THIS. -Parks began by photographing the life and work of Ella Watson, who cleaned the agency's office (Fig. 9.1)

Photojournalism vs. Documentary

Different ways of displaying info Photojournalism: often uses photo essay; often for commercial/media outlets/magazines; product of development of mass media; importance of print sales, so need entertainment values/news; might have social change idea, but usually veiled; photographers have new control over how images are used Documentary: images to advance an agenda; addresses social issues; audience was well-off who could help; focus on social change; often non-profit or governmental

Dorothea Lange

Here we see Dorothea Lange who was probably the mostprominent photographer who worked with the fsa -A language had a commercial studio photography studio in SanFrancisco when the Great Depression started and this image on ...the left was one that she made before she joinedthe FSA this was a breadline basically soup kitchen that ...was in operation across the street from her commercial photographystudio she literally. Got out of the studio and got very interested withthe people who are being deeply impacted by the Great ... Depression wonderful image with this you know one man who'sturned around with his.Empty. Cabin or whatever this vessel that he's going to collecthis soup. As he waits. Cut it Grim resolution. -All the right we have a photograph of Lange atwork.Getting up on the.The roof of her car and using her need atripod for camera. As she gets a shot.In some rural District in Texas. - Came to work early on for the FSA for Strykerand quickly became one of his favorite photographers because she. Almost more than any of the others really could provide.They're the kinds of images that he really really need. For the heat that we were going to make hiswhole Endeavor be very success. - And with this image we see exactly why strike.Love Dorothea Lange's photography so much. Probably sort of the moral equivalent of the Mona Lisaphotography. Lange's migrant mother from Nipomo. California 1936. - This image is it's been called the most frequently reproducedphotograph of all time and I am rather inclined to. Believe that I searched.Because it's been every. Again like the other FSA photographs it's public domain andso people get to use. You know without having to pay rights or anyting todo so and so that and it's also a really ... incredibly effect. Affect. Photo. - So we see here this mother with. Small a baby. On her way. At 2. Slightly older children. Who seem ashamed or. Afraid or something so the clutching onto their mother asshe looks out again with the sky.Quiet resolution.A determination.Concern. -So you do you do the worry has creased herface. -They're wearing. Insertive again not fancy clothing. Things a bit raggedy bit dirt. And the image really really just stands out as oneof the most effective in this particular mode of documentary ... this idea. - Making you sympathize empathize with the c.You feel for this mother and the idea that she'strying to take care of these children and she's impoverished ... and you know that doesn't know where the scrap offood is coming next to feed. - And ultimately this sort of appeal this documentary appeal issomething that the Martha Rosler essay that I've asked. This image and roessler's kind of comment.On this particular mode of documentary which is important. - So the story behind the famous photograph we see herein images that came from Dorothea Lange's contacts. In her autobiography she recounts having. - A long day out in the fields documentary migrant workersin California and deciding to sort of drive home drive back to the hotel or wherever she was. And on her way back she saw.Hello little dirt road off to one side with alittle hand-lettered signs his pea Pickers. -And she drove right by it but then thought betterof it a few minutes later turned around came back ...and said she just wanted to see what they wasthere she had a sense when she drove back in ... the road she found this little canvas lean-to. With this woman and her children. Sitting in it. - Presumably her husband was.Still working in the field and she was minding thesechill. And as she approached. Video of you can see through from shot to shothow she starts from her The Longshot she some distance ...away and then gradually sort of moves in closer andcloser until we arrive. At the find. Image the famous one which is up close. - In her autobiography.Lange talk..What was her experience of taking this Photograph and sheactually sort of inserts and interpretation of what the woman ...what would her relationship to the woman is although apparentlythey didn't actually really speak as far as far as ... I was reporting it this is sort of Silent understandingbetween the two of them. - The concept was basically if you let me take yourphotograph if you do this for me.Somehow it will benefit.Right and that's certainly the way that leg perceived herwork for the FSA that was the whole point of it was to try and bring back photographs that wouldshow people what real life was like. In.These places for for these impoverished -All these farmworkers and that ultimately it would enable thegovernment to create programs and do things that. Help. - If you read the Rossler essay will see you animage coming up shortly related to. Florence Thompson the woman who's in the photo.I seem to have a somewhat different recollection of theencounter this is one of the things that will be discussed. -So drippy Lang was a really excellent photographer and hada great eye for.Situations and people that she was photograph.This image of the other Plantation overseer and his fieldhands. From someplace in mrs.. Speaks about. - So we've.The man in the foreground with his. Rather defiant. Or something up look up on the bumper of hiscar standing there kind of like he owns.Well he owns the car he owns I'm not surewhat. - I behind him are these group of black men sittingon the step.The porch. It's probably the local. General stores. -And.I dare say they probably don't own car. And they are quite likely feel hands that would workfor.This guy in. With his sort of interesting.. As a whole this photo. Captures body language it captures in a disc. -Rachel relationships it captures Lee is it it's a sociological. I should mention not for nothing her her second husbandPaul Taylor was actually a sociologist and she and her husband work together quite extensively in a published book projects. That were intended to use photography. And.The accounts of the individuals that they were being documentedas very much and a sociological. - So like a somebody who has a real eye forthis kind of thing and is and I think he's ... really good at capturing a lot of that information inan image. So what are the points I want to make aboutthis though is. - Following up on that comment that we had from JohnBerger remember when he talked.The way that photography you know intentionality and photography isprobably weaker than almost any other medium and this is my classic example of this because when you see thefull photo it becomes pretty clear I think what it was that line was looking at why she was interestedin this why she made the photo what she thought she was probably thought that she was capturing a Snapchatshutter here but I've got some examples of how this ... image was used in Publications and you can see. Exactly. How the meaning of an image can be radically changedby a few simple steps of yours a simple crop ... a change of caption would have. - So let's see how that way. Is the man in the foreground with his. Rather arrogantly propped up on the bumper of his car. His body language speaks volume.He's quite something he's piece of work. And behind him sitting on the steps and sitting onthe porch. It's probably the general. Our group of his field hands so these would be.The black Farm Workers who are out there doing allthe Drudge work. - Sky who seems to be pretty well fed and probablyhasn't turned his hand at a whole lot in the ...fields in a while it is overseeing. Lags interested taking this Photograph seems pretty cool. There's kind of abiding sociological interest and understand.This division of labor the cut of racial inequities infall. But again it's it's also really brilliant way of capture. Pretty Sim.With Body Language and Composition this country. - So the white man and the rest of the peoplein the photo. So it seems pretty clear what she meant by thisin terms of sociological interest I should mention that Lang's ...second husband Paul Taylor was actually a sociology. - As she worked together with him they did some bookprojects after her engagement with the fs.Which word organized around.Looking at.Tried tried to present. - People and places in their situations using photography and textthat was derived from basically his interviews with these p. We're best essential a sociological documents so you got tounderstand the people in the place.. So like was very very much invested in that kindof sociological view of her. - What are the interesting things about this particular photographs thoughthat I'm going to point out now it has to do with that concept that John Berger flow. - Tut when he talked about how.Photography is as a media.Only carries the intention of the photographer very weak.Weakness of intention in photography and that has to dowith the way in which the image can be reframed represented in different contact. And thereby made carry very different meanings than what youmight ask. - So looking at this image and its entirety it seemspretty clear what it was the Lang was trying to ... get at with it and why she photographed it andbut it's what I meant to her pretty. As you'll see from the examples that I have followingthis that's something that's you again not anchored solely by ... the image but can also be very dependent upon. Upon context. - Energize a caption a crop can make a word.Of the thing. So here we see. So here we see legs photograph as it was usedin a book written by Arch. Written by Archibald macleish who was the librarian of Congressat the time a book.Free published 19th.And if you can zoom in on the. He's. You pay into America we told ourselves we were freebecause we were free we were free because we were this kind. -Right and so on and so forth and now.Overseer from lines photograph has been. The frame. Erratic.And printed it in the book. Kind of tight. On his body language is that. But now we've lost entirely that relationship to the blackfield hands. - Adele. Of America. Land of the Free. The words of. The librarian of Congress kind of an amazing. Upending the content of. At all it took was a bit of cropping andsome texts running alongside of it. Kind of astonishing you. -And here we see linesphotograph a few years later in 1941 published in the ... book twelve million black voices by Rich.Cricket match. -And of course now we've returned to the full. On this page we have reviewed the text starts withthis strong heading the word negro. Prince we Black Folk of the United States are usuallydesignated this is literally the voice of a black man ...talking about.Black voices switch. Had been silenced and we're looking at a photograph thatseems to underscore. - Again it is it was the images innocence. Like Lang's original. Text it again. Because it's being used to support. Talking about the experience of being a black man inthe United States. So I hope we're seeing at ... this point again that. absolutemalleability of meaning of Photographs depending on.. what Alan Sekula called the discourse situation. - Of course for the most part as one of thelead photographers for the FSA Lange was doing Work on behalf of the American people was a hugesupporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the new deal at all ... of that that represented she had it there's an interestingmoment in her career though after we get into World ... War II after Pearl Harbor when the American government. Of setting up internment camps for Japanese-Americans this is somethingof a Stain on the FDR presidency - Basically, especially on the West Coast. they rounded upJapanese Americans whether they were, had been born in the United States or were immigrants or regardless took whole ... families and set them up, And put them in basically. in these internment camps in various places out West. -Dorothea Lange was really deeply. offended by this, critical ofThe whole concept and this imagereally expresses her feelings on this. -This is an imagefromOne Nation indivisible that shows of a little Japanese-American girlsaying the Pledge of Allegiance surrounded behind her by a ... number of children of different races.Saying the Pledge in unison it was it's a verymuch a stark Contrast a kind of criticism of the official government policy. -She also traveled to some of the internment camps andmade a body of photographsof those camps and what was going on there carryingwith her that Critique -.Existence interestingly that was a body of work thatSlater those photographs were.Set aside. Nobody even barely knew that they existed until I thinkmaybe the 1990s. Which was around the time that actually the American governmentfinally got around to apologizing. For having done this. -So anyway another outstanding DorotheaLange photograph. -WHEN DOROTHEA LANGE TURNED UP AND SHE WAS PERSONALLY RIGHT ON THE EDGE OF THE WORST OF THE DEPRESSION WHEN CALIFORNIA FARMERS LOST THEIR LAND. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. HOW COULD THAT HAPPEN? AND I THINK THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT ROY WAS ABLE TO DO WAS OPEN PEOPLE'S EYES. ♪ >> DOROTHEA, STRY ENOUGH, PHOTOGRAPHED TO SATISFY HERSELF. IT WAS HER SENSIBILITY THAT SHE WAS CONCERNED AND ILLUSTRATED. >> IT STRETCHED STRYKER'S VISION FOR THE PROJECT BECAUSE SHE BROUGHT THESE ART QUALITIES TO IMPOVERISHED PEOPLES. SHE TREATED THEM WITH DIGNITY AND THE PHOTOGRAPHS SHE MADE OF THEM. >> HER PHOTOGRAPHS WERE SO POIGNANT THAT YOU COULDN'T LOOK AT ONE WITHOUT WANTING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. ♪ >> THE DAY SHE DA PICKERS IN NIPOMO, CALIFORNIA SHE SAID IT WAS A RAINY DAY. SHE PHOTOGRAPHED THEM. IT WAS A MISERABLE MESS. AND SHE DROVE AWAY, BUT THEN HAD THIS THOUGHT THAT SHE WASN'T FINISHED THERE. SHE WENT BACK. THIS FLORENCE THOMPSON WAS CAMPED OUT AT THE EDGE OF THE CAMP IN A VULNERABLE POSITION BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE POLICE CAME FIRST TO CLEAR PEOPLE AWAY, AND SHE WAS THERE WITH NO MEANS OF ESCAPE. SHE WAS THERE WITH SMALL CHILDREN, NO MAN, AND DOROTHEA LANGE JUST RESPONDED TO THE SITUATION. AS SOON AS SHE HAD MADE THE FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH SHE KNEW THAT SHE HAD DONE HER WORK FOR THE DAY. >> I THINK IT'S ONE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST PICTURE. MOTHER AND CHILD. WHAT MORE DO I NEED TO SAY? >> Narrator: THE POWER OF LANGE'S PHOTOGRAPHS FINALLY PERSUADED LEGISLATURES ON CAPITAL HILL THAT SOMETHING NEEDED TO BE DONE. THE FIRST FEDERALLY FUNDED HOUSING PROGRAM FOR MIGRANT WORKERS ENTERING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA WAS ESTABLISHED. >> EVEN THOUGH THE PUBLICATION OF THIS PICTE DID BRING, IT SEEMS, SOME FOOD RELIEF TO NIPOMO A FEW DAYS LATER, SHE HAD MOVED ON BY THEN. BUT A LOT OF THE CHILDREN AND FLORENCE THOMPSON HERSELF CONTINUED TO BEAR THE SCARS OF THIS VERY HARD PERIOD. ♪ >> Narrator: TO Y "MIGRANT MOTHER" REMAINS ONE OF THE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE COLLECTION. -Unlike Evans, Dorothea Lange came to the R.A. in 1935 with a sure sense of social justice and of how photography could reveal inequality. As a statement of her belief, in 1923 she tacked lines by English statesman and writer Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to her darkroom door: The contemplation of things as they are without substitution or imposture without error or confusion is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention. The seminar she took in New York City on basic photography, given by Pictorialist Clarence White, did not influence the look or the subject matter of her images. During the early Depression, Lange photographed labor demonstrations and breadlines in San Francisco. Her work with activist-economist Paul Taylor, whom she subsequently married, focused her attention on the plight of migrant farmworkers. For the R.A., she produced the photograph that became the national icon of the Depression. Migrant Mother is one of several shots Lange took of a thirty- two-year-old woman and her children, who were stranded in a frozen pea field among the crop they had hoped to pick to earn some money (Fig. 9.3). Undoubtedly the most popular image created during the Depression era, the photograph was repeatedly sent out to newspapers and magazines by the FS.A. Though powerful, Migrant Mother is not typical of Lange's work. She did not readily repeat the mother-and-child theme. With Taylor supplying the text, Lange published captioned photographs in An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (1939; Fig. 9.4), a book whose title refers to the destructive southwestern drought of the mid-1930s, and the migration it caused. In the book, photographs were accompanjed by quotations from the sitters, unlike the fictionalized stafements created by Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell for You Have Seen Their Faces. After her five years with the R.A./ES.A, Lange continued to make photographs that accorded with her concern for social justice. She and Taylor were adamantly opposed to the 1942 War Relocation Authority (W.R.A.), which forcibly moved Japanese-Americans to internment camps. Like Adams, Lange photographed the internees' life at Manzanar Relocation Center in California. For Life magazine, she profiled the daily life of a public defender in Alameda County, California, and chronicled the last days of farming communities in the Berrysea Valley, northeast of San Francisco, on the brink of being flooded by the construction of a new dam.

Henry Luce

His magazine empire included Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, Fortune -Bourke- white got an invitation from Henry Luce who had previouslystarted the magazine time in the twenties and it become ...up and coming back. - Media magnate of the time Henry Luce l u c Loose invited her to come to New York to bethe first official staff photographer on a new magazine that ... he was starting that was called Fortune. -So exist in the business magazine. So they so the time. Company was looking to launch this new magazine was goingto focus on business and they wanted to. Use a lot of images and play up imagery -Getting getting publicity for herself but it also worked hand-in-glovewith what was going on with the loose media Empire Henry Luce realized what an asset she was at fortuneand then a few years later when he started Life Magazine the first issue came out in 1936 as we'llsee which featured photographs by.

Gerda Taro

Photographed loyalist militia women training. Worked closely with Robert Capa. First female photojournalist to cover front lines of a war and to die while doing so. "Death in the Making" w/Capa. -Robert Capa another majorfigure in the development of photo journalist. His original name actually was.Andrea Friedman he was born in hungry hungry and movedin the 30s to Paris.Where he connected with this woman Gerda Taro the twoof them were lovers and work together he started photographing ... -with the two of them were photographing.Various things and then Taro would take there. Pictures to the magazine editors. And they invented this character of Robert CAPA.Fictitious American mysterious photography. Who they claimed was the author of the photos asa kind of marketing device and that actually help them ...sell more pictures. -So they started working under this kind. Common.Pseudonym of Robert CAPA. And then when the Spanish Civil War broke out in1936. -The two of them travel to Spain and both ofthem were making photographs and sending them back the image ...of the left the death of a loyalist Soldier isbasically the photograph that sort of made kappas career -Toro of guitar was herself a really terrific photojournalist really great photographer however her career was abruptly cut short in 1937 when she was run over by a tank in Spanish Civil War and was killed from that point on word Kappa pursued his career as an individual basically and ultimately got himself acreditacion in World War II Life Magazine you see here a cover of a magazine cold but was founded in France in the 1920s and on the right another photo magazine called also French featuring photographs made by Kappa from the Spanish Civil War

Walker Evans

Photographer that photographed the impoverished during the Great Depression -stayed distanced -Walker Evans was one of the first photographers brought inby Striker.To work with him at the FSA. - He had a relatively short and somewhat tempestuous relationship withhis tenure at the FSA but he. Was again one of the photographers who helped introduce Strikerto the possibilities of what photography could do. - We're looking at here are two images he made fromthe small city of Bethlehem Pennsylvania which was a steel town. - Another thing with Evans he's he was very well educatedbelieve he went to Yale and he. Was part of a kind of Intelligentsia in New York. -Very involved with people who at the time were organizingthe Museum of Modern Art. So he's very close friends. That kind of group of people leasing very well-educated veryliterate. -And brought a kind of an interesting formal interest tohis subjects one things with Evans is you don't really ...catch him OU playing the kind of empathy card toomuch he's maintains a fairly objective distance from.The subjects that he's shooting. -But he has a really great eye for an ofstriking compositions and and can communicate quite a lot in the frame of a photograph. -This Photograph on the left of the graveyard with housesand steel mill has always been fairly really striking so he's from the perspective of upon a hill and acemetery with that stone cross in the foreground playing off against the row houses below and the smoke stacks ofthe steel mill Beyond Sodor encapsulating an entire community in .one image from.Birth to. Crave ultimately living and dying in this town. -This is easily Evans best known image from his tenurewith the FSA.This photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs Who was the. In the caption here life of a sharecropper in HaleCounty Alabama. -This image is I think pretty rightly.Famous Metairie produced lots and lots of places there's somethingabout this kind of directness of the Gaze of a ...lemur. Kind of not. Exactly confrontational a but very immediately. - And when you look at this image it's.Either you don't really sense of pity or.Kind of anything emotional about it it's very.And so we see her face the way her faceis lined.From the beautiful years. Hard-working labor that she's.Been subjected to. -She's got this very kind of simple. Dress with cotton print.Chino is not high fashion.She's posed against the plain wood siding of her home. Nothing fancy about this nothing I mean. - Nothing glamorous it all through the antithesis of all ofthe.But again with a sort of sense of fortitude anddetermination that she has. - One thing I'll point out as you're looking at theimage. There's a another way into this besides just the documentarykind of angle with Evans as always. Thinking aesthetic. -So if you think of this is a kind ofstudy of textures.Thanks and contrasts that way.Do the texture of the pattern of the dress.Texture of the weather wood.Of the siding of the house behind her the texturefor hair the texture for skin. All of these things.Add together to give us a really should have profoundsense.Of this person and where she is and who sheis. -Here we see two more images by Evans.One of them the interior of Allie Mae Burroughs homeon the right. And another image from a different sharecropper home on the.What we see here is basically the the absolute starknessand simplicity of the life that these people really.Again nothing extravagant.Kind of extravagant thing in the the Burroughs home seemsto be the oil cloth that is laid across the table. In the kitchen. - We see outside of little Basin on a Shelf. For the towel hanging by its presumably where her husband.Wash up on his way back in from the fields.And receive just so you know the most simple kindof furnishings and. No elements of the kitchen through the doorway on theside. - Oven the other image we see the wall of asharecropper's house.Where you see there's all these utensils Forks.Spoons and such that. Could have hanging on the wall there's a little boy. Tacked up on the wall and the the utensils handlesour old stuff down behind that indicating actually a home ...of evil. -Less. Wealth then the Burrows.Because I think it means that they don't even havea cupboard or a drawer. The utensils and that's where they get to keep themis tacked up on the wall like that. So it's images of this kind of. Deep poverty. -That were intended by Evans and racetrack.To bring a message home to the rest of. American PublicAnd to the Congress.The kind of crying need for government support of anumber of New Deal programs that would help to ameliorate ... the soda pop. -And here we see Allie Mae Burroughs again alongside anotherPhotograph by Evans of her husband Floyd Burroughs this year ...crop. - And looking at these two images it's interesting to thinkabout them as a couple although as individual images I ... think it's pretty clear.Why the photograph of Allie Mae is the one thathas become so reproduced and so famous whereas Floyd Burroughs. -ONE OF THE FIRST DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHERS STRYKER SENT INTO THE FIELD WAS WALKER EVANS. >> EVANS WAS TELLING HIM ABOUT THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE. HE WAS PARTICULARLY AWARE OF THIS BEING A MOMENT IN TIME THAT WOULD NOT COME AGAIN. >> I CAN'T THINK OF ANY PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE UNITED STATES WHO WAS MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN WALKER EVANS. >> Narrator: EVANS CALLED FOR IMAGES THAT WOULD BE A PURE RECORD, NOT PROPAGANDA. HE MADE LISTS OF POTENTIAL SUBJECTS THAT CAME TO LOOK VERY MUCH LIKE THE SHOOTING SCRIPTS THAT STRYKER WOULD GIVE TO LATER PHOTOGRAPHERS. AT THE TIME, EVANS SHARED A STUDIO IN NEW YORK CITY WITH BEN SHAHN, WHO WAS ALSO WORKING FOR THE R.A. AS A PAINTER. EAGER TO LEARN THE CAMERA, HE TURNED TO EVANS FOR ADVISE. >> EVANS WAS ABOUT TO GO OFF ON A TRIP SOMEWHERE. SHAHN WAS SEEING EVANS INTO A CAB. EVANS GETS IN, ROLLS DOWN THE WINDOW TO SAY ONE LAST GOOD BYE, AND SHAHN SAYS, IN DESPERATION, WALKER, PLEASE TELL ME JUST ONE THING ABOUT THE CAMERA. TELL ME ONE THING BEFORE YOU LEAVE. AND WALKER LOOKED AT HIM AND SAID F-11 AND HOLD IT STEADY. -WHILE STRYKER GAVE THE PHOTOGRAPHERS A GREAT DEAL OF CREATIVE AUTONOMY, THE BUREAUCRAT IN HIM DEMANDED DETAILED ACCOUNTS OF THERE WHEREABOUTS. >> DON'T GO OFF FOR TWO OR THREE WEEKS AND NOT REPORT, OTHERWISE YOU'RE IN TROUBLE WITH STRYKER. SO I THINK TO A GREAT EXTENT THAT'S WHY HE AND WALKER EVANS DIDN'T GET ALONG TOO WELL. -IN 1936, EVANS CONVINCED STRYKER TO SEND HIM TO HALE COUNTY ALABAMA WITH WRITER JAMES AGEE. TOGETHER THEY SPENT EIGHT WEEKS DOCUMENTING THE PLIGHT OF THE TINGLE FAMILY. NEARLY FOURTY YEARS LATER, WALKER EVANS WENT BACK TO HALE COUNTY WITH BILL CHRISTIANBERRY. -WALKER, AND I THINK THIS IS ONE OF THE GREAT STRENGTHS OF HIS, HIS PHOTOGRAPHY, HE KEPT THIS WONDERFUL KIND OF DISTANCE THAT WOULD SEEM NECESSARY, SO THE PICTURES NEVER GET MAUDLIN, THE NEVER GET SENTIMENTAL, THEY'RE JUST A STATEMENT, A GREAT DOCUMENT OF WHAT HE WAS EXPERIENCING. ♪ >> Narrator: THES EVENTUALLY PUBLISHED IN THE BOOK "LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN". >> NOW WHEN YOU OPEN THE BOOK, AND YOU GO TO THE FIRT PHOTOGRAPH YOU DON'T SEE A SHARE-CROPPER. YOU SEE MISTER WATSON TIDMORE, A LAND OWNER. EVANS WAS THE ONE WHO SEQUENCED THOSE PHOTOGRAPH. HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING. >> Narrator: WHILE EVANS NEVER RETURNED TO STRYKER'S UNIT, THE PICTURES HE TOOK IN HALE COUNTY CONTINUED TO BE AMONG THE MOST REPRODUCED IMAGES OF THE COLLECTION. >> WHAT WAS IT STRYKER ALLEGEDLY SAID, EVANS WAS E FIRST ONE FIRED OF THE FSA GROUP, AND THEN HE SAID NOW GO OUT AND MAKE PICTURES AS GOOD AS EVANS. -Among Stryker's first hires was Walker Evans (1903-1975), who came to the agency in June 1935 with well-established credentials. Through Berenice Abbott (see p. 288), Evans had the opportunity to view the photographs of Eugène Atget (see Fig. 8.29), which Abbott had amassed in Paris and brought to New York City. Evans responded to Atget's straightforward recording of historic streets and buildings, as well as worn interiors and architectural detail that bespoke the persistence of the past in the present. Unlike the Surrealist photographers, who found Atget's work full of mystery and the uncanny, Evans located there a reserved and courtly melancholy about the transitions of modern life. He spoke of Atget's "lyrical understanding of the street, trained observation of it, special leeling for patina, eye for revealing detail, over all of which is thrown a poetry"12 Atget's images heartened Evans's aesthetic inclinations, while the commercial and fashion photographs of Steichen ran counter to his sensibilities. Evans wrote that Steichen's "general note is money, understanding advertising Values, special feeling for parvenu elegance, slick technique, over all of which is thrown a hardness of superficiality that is the hardness and superficiality of Americas latter day"1 In Evans's view, commercialism was not simply Steichen's personal dilemma, but Americas national predicament. Evans believed in finding scenes and objects whose appearance înplied a story or acted as a metaphor for an attitude toward life. He felt that his unambiguous, clearly composed images owed a debt to the spare and rhythmic prose style of American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), 1" Evans's image of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Fig. 9.2), symbolically guides the viewer from background to foreground through a fatal progression of work, home life, and death. The image shows no people, but uses the locale and flattened perspective to indicate the compass of their restricted lives. Evans secured a leave of absence from the R.A. to work for Fortune magazine on a project with his friend the writer James Agee (1909-1955). Like other publications in the mid-1930s, Fortune contrived human-interest photo-essays on how the Depression affected individuals. For their joint venture, Agee and Evans chronicled the lives of three families of impoverished, cotton-growing tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama. Agee's procrastination, and Fortune's doubts about the project, eventually prompted the company to cancel the assignment. Ihe project was later published as the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), with a suite of Evans's uncaptioned photographs preceding Agee's text:Agee explained that his prose nd Evans's photographs were to be viewed as coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborativet5 Published in the shadow of the commercially successful You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), by Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell (see p. 284), the Evans-Agee book was a financial failure. Evans's image of twenty-seven-year-old Allie Mae Burroughs, thinly disguised as "Annie Mae Gudger" in the text, exemplified his approach to picture-making (Fig. 9.7). Evanss disdain for Stryker's assignment guidelines and deadlines made him the legendary bad boy of FES.A. photography, and he was dismissed in 1937. It is difficult to imagine that the autocratic Stryker could tolerate Evans's desire to record handmade advertising signs or austere domestic interiors as an anonymous folk art. Evans's images tended to lift poverty and the economic effects of the Depression into a timeless picturesque universe. Spare and serene images comprised the bulk of Evans's pictures in "American Photographs," the title of his 1937 Museum of Modern Art exhibition and of his 1938 book. This book influenced a generation of younger American Robert Frank (see pp. 342). They admired photographers, such as its dispassionate approach, which austic alienation from society. His insistence on publishing the images without captions and in no chronological order suggested the sensibilities of an artist who demanded that his work be taken on its own terms. for them indicated Evans's After the ES.A., Evans continued his artful documentary in such series as his subway photographs taken with a concealed camera. But his major source of income was ironically as a writer and photographer for Fortune, a periodical devoted to big business.

LIFE magazine

Started by Henry Luce in 1936 -Key magazine in developing and popularizing photojournalism, larger than other magazines (10x13); provided news coverage but also escapism via feature, light-hearted coverage -Photograph by Bourke-White on the cover of the veryfirst Life Magazine. -Time Life Corporation of the time Corporation spent a lotof time and energy cultivating. - The celebrity of just a handful of its many manyphotographers and she was one of the lead ones when the leave cases there. - Because it was a way of promoting their corporate productso there was a very symbiotic relationship she had. With her corporate sponsors. - And so in the run-up to the first issue ofLife magazine they sent the others sent Margaret bourke-white out ... to this place in Montana Fort Peck Dam this wasa new kind of New Deal project to build a hydroelectric Dam out in Montana and they sent her outabsolutely knowing she would bring back Beautiful images like these that we're seeing on this page.These kind of made a Monumental lising images of.Industrial site. -ended up covering social situation of people there; Interesting situation and that the sum of the editorial noteseditor's note the beginning of this first issue of life ain't they comment on the fact that they were sortof surprised to see something besides these kind of wonderful industrial kind of images that they expected from her andthey got a whole story out of her coverage. -How these people spend their Saturday night I got 10,000Montana relief workers make whoopie on Saturday night which became ... one of the first was the first real photo essay. In Life Magazine published in an American Magazine. -A full third of editorial spread she was basically toresponding to the environment that she found herself in but the editors at life then converted it into what wecall a photo essay. -Photo essays a really spring out of this kind ofcommercial Magazine contact.And basically it's a kind of a story that's toldlargely through photographs that the photographs kind of consume more ...of the page than the text you'll have a bitof descriptive text some captions and so on but the ...stories really carry.

Florence Thompson

Woman pictured in the picture Migrant Mother -The case of Florence Thompson (the subject of "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange) asks the question about the destiny of subjects of iconic photography, and raises the doubt about the "exploitation" of the subject: "What good is it doing me?" asked Ms.Thompson. -Rosler focuses on the people in the photographs and gives the example of Florence Thompson, a Cherokee woman who is the subject of Dorothea Lange's photograph. In many documentary works, the viewers never find out what happens to the people in the photographs. Even if Florence Thompson's image raises awareness, should she be compensated? There is a reciprocal relationship between the photographer and the subject. "She thought that my pictures might help her, so she helped me." -Dorothea Lange. -Dorothea Lange's photograph of Florence Thompson, Migrant Mother, a destitute migrant working in the 1930's, has stood the test of time in the photography world. Florence Thompson remarked in 1972 that she allowed Lange to make the photograph of her in the hope that the photograph would help her. The camp where Thompson resided was fixed up but unfortunately Thompson was no longer there, so she never benefited directly from the help. Thompson's story has become entrenched with the photograph that Dorothea Lange took during the New Deal Era. --In 1978 there was a small news story on a historical curiosity: the real-live person who was photographed by Dorothea Lange in 1936 in what became the world's most reproduced photograph. Florence Thompson, seventy-five in 1978, a Cherokee living in a trailer in Modesto, California, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "That's my picture hanging all over the world, and I can't get a penny out of it." - She said that she is proud to be its subject but asked, "What good's it doing me?" She has tried unsuccessfully to get the photo suppressed. (MORE IRONY AS IT WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP PEOPLE LIKE HER, BUT IT DID NOTHING FOR HER) About it, Roy Stryker, genius of the photo section of the Farm Security Administration, for which Lange was working, said in 1972:"When Dorothea took that picture, that was the ultimate. She never surpassed it. To me, it was the picture of Farm Security.... So many times I've asked myself what is she thinking? She has all of the suffering of mankind in her but all of the perseverance too. . . . You can see anything you want to in her. She is immortal."15 -In 1979, a United Press International story about Mrs. Thompson said she gets $331.60 a month from Social Security and $44.40 for medical expenses. She is of interest solely because she is an incongruity, a photograph that has aged; of interest solely because she is a postscript to an acknowledged work of art. -A good, principled photographer I know, who works for an occupational health and safety group and cares about how his images are understood, was annoyed by the articles about Florence Thompson. -He thought they were cheap, that the photo Migrant Mother, with its obvious symbolic dimension, stands over and apart from her, is not-her, has an independent life history. (Are photographic images, then, like civilization, made on the backs of the exploited?) - I mentioned to him that in the book In This Proud Land,17 Lange's field notes are quoted as saying, "She thought that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me." -My friend the labor photographer responded that the photo's publication caused local officials to fix up the migrant camp, so that although Mrs. Thompson didn't benefit directly, others like her did. I think she had a different idea of their bargain. -FLORENCE THOMPSON WAS CAMPED OUT AT THE EDGE OF THE CAMP IN A VULNERABLE POSITION BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE POLICE CAME FIRST TO CLEAR PEOPLE AWAY, AND SHE WAS THERE WITH NO MEANS OF ESCAPE. SHE WAS THERE WITH SMALL CHILDREN, NO MAN, AND DOROTHEA LANGE JUST RESPONDED TO THE SITUATION. AS SOON AS SHE HAD MADE THE FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH SHE KNEW THAT SHE HAD DONE HER WORK FOR THE DAY. >> I THINK IT'S ONE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST PICTURE. MOTHER AND CHILD. -THE POWER OF LANGE'S PHOTOGRAPHS FINALLY PERSUADED LEGISLATURES ON CAPITAL HILL THAT SOMETHING NEEDED TO BE DONE. THE FIRST FEDERALLY FUNDED HOUSING PROGRAM FOR MIGRANT WORKERS ENTERING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA WAS ESTABLISHED. >> EVEN THOUGH THE PUBLICATION OF THIS PICTE DID BRING, IT SEEMS, SOME FOOD RELIEF TO NIPOMO A FEW DAYS LATER, SHE HAD MOVED ON BY THEN. BUT A LOT OF THE CHILDREN AND FLORENCE THOMPSON HERSELF CONTINUED TO BEAR THE SCARS OF THIS VERY HARD PERIOD.

Roy E. Stryker

head of the FSA historical section, assembled a team of renowned photographers -WHEN ROY STRYKER FIRST CAME TO WORK FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN DECEMBER OF 1935 AMERICA WS IN THE MIDST OF A GREAT DEPRESSION. HE WAS HIRED TO DIRECT A GROUP OF PHOTOGRAPHERS WORKING FOR A NEW DEAL AGENCY CALLED THE RESETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION. THEIR JOB, AT LEAST INITIALLY, WAS TO CONVINCA SKEPTICAL CONGRESS THAT THOUSANDS OF DISPOSSESSED FARM FAMILIES POURING ACROSS THE COUNTRY, LIKE THE JOAD'S IN STEINBECK'S "GRAPES OF WRATH" DESPERATELY NEEDED THEIR GOVERNMENTS HELP. BUT DURING A TIME WHEN RURAL POVERTY WAS NEARLY INVISIBLE TO ANYONE WHO DIDN'T LIVE IT, PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT'S RADICAL NEW DEAL PROGRAMS WERE A TOUGH SELL ON CAPITAL HILL. -FOR ROY STRYKER AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY GROUP OF PHOTOGRAPHERS, OVERCOMING SUCH APATHY WAS THEIR BIGGEST CHALLENGE. SOMEHOW, THROUGH THE USE OF PICTURES, THEY HAD TO MOTIVATE AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. >> ROY STRYKER, IN 1935, WHEN ALL OF THIS WAS DEVELOPING, HAD ONLY THE VAGUEST NOTION OF WHAT HE WAS DOING. ROY WAS LEARNING ON THE JOB. HE WAS LEARNING FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHERS. >> ALL THE TIME THAT BEN WAS PHOTOGRAPHING HE NOT ONLY SAW THE GRIMNESS OF THINGS THAT HE WAS PHOTOGRAPHING, HE ALSO SAW THE HUMOR OF IT. AND HE ALSO SAW THE PAINNESS OF IT. >> ROY HAD SOME GOOD PICTURES OF FIELD EROSION AND BEN LOOKED AT THEM AND HE SAID "WELL, THEY'RE VERY INTERESTING PICTURES BUT THEY WON'T SELL ANYBODY ANYTHING. NOW IF YOU HAD A PICTURE OF A BOY OR A FAMILY, A POOR FAMILY THAT CONNECTS POVERTY WITH THE EROSION, THAT'S GOING TO SELL PEOPLE." >> WELL THIS FILE WAS DEFINITELY PROPAGANDA, THERE'S NO QUESTION ABOUT IT, BUT WHEN YOU REALLY LOOKED AT IT YOU COULDN'T STAND IT, YOU HAD TO DO SOMETHING, SO PROPAGANDA TO ME MEANS A CALL TO DO SOMETHING. -ROY WAS BASICALLY A TEACHER, AND HE HAD REALLY COMMENCED OF THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION AS A TEACHER, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, HE ENJOYED A FIGHT. HE'S LIKE A LITTLE BOY WHO LIKES TO GO OUT AND PUNCH THE OTHER KIDS. ROY LOVED A FIGHT, AND IF PEOPLE WERE STANDING IN HIS WAY HIS GREATEST JOY WAS TO GET THEM OUT OF THERE. -ROY WOULD HAVE DEFINED PATRIOTISM VERY DIFFERENTLY THAN MANY PEOPLE WOULD DEFINE IT TODAY. ROY'S PATRIOTISM INCLUDED THE RIGHT TO QUESTION THE WAY THINGS WERE BEING DONE. AND CERTAINLY BY THE 1930'S HE WAS VERY ANGRY ABOUT THE SITUATION THAT POOR FARMERS FOUND THEMSELVES IN, AND HE REALLY WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. >> Narrator: ROY WAS PERSUADED BY TUGWELL TO HD UP THE RA'S NEW HISTORICAL UNIT, A CONTROVERSIAL GROUP OF ECONOMISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS WORKING TO BOLSTER SUPPORT FOR THEIR PROGRAM. STRYKER REVELED IN HIS ROLE AS DIRECTOR, DEFENDING THE AGENCY AGAINST THE STEADY BARRAGE OF ATTACKS FROM CONSERVATIVES IN CONGRESS. -STRYKER RECRUITED ONE OF HIS FORMR STUDENTS, A YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER NAMED ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN, TO HELP CREATE A STRATEGY FOR PROMOTING THE AGENCY'S PROGRAM. THEY BEGAN THEIR CAMPAIGN BY TAKING PICTURES OF EVERYTHING, PEOPLE WORKING, LIVING AND SUFFERING. >> WITHIN A VERY SHORT TIME ROY BEGAN TO DEVELOP A SENSE OF WHAT NEEDED TO HAPPEN. >> THE PICTURE BEGAN TO BE THE THING OF MY LIFE. THE PHOTOGRAPH WAS THE WAY TO REACH THE PEOPLE. SOMEHOW, SOME WAY, I WANTED LIFE IN THE PICTURES. >> Narrator: BUT WHAT KIND OF PICTURES? HE KNEW THAT THE PUBLIC WOULDN'T TOLERATE ANOTHER ROUND OF OUTRIGHT PROPAGANDA. >> THERE WAS A STRONG REACTION AT THE END OF WORD WAR ONE THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAD BEEN FAR TOO INVOLVED IN PROPAGANDA, AND FOR THE NEXT TEN, FIFTEEN YEARS THERE WAS A SENTIMENT IN WASHINGTON, THERE WAS A BACKLASH. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NEVER BE INVOLVED IN PROPAGANDA. >> Narrator: SO THE DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPH BEE STRYKER'S TOOL OF CHOICE. -AS THE IMAGES ARRIVE FROM THE FIELD, STRYKER WAS DEEPLY MOVED BY THE DIGNITY AND STRENGTH BURIED IN THE FACES OF HIS COUNTRYMEN. HE BEGAN TO SEE THE POTENTIAL OF CREATING ONE OF THE GREATEST SOCIAL DOCUMENTS OF HIS TIME, AND LOOKED TO THE PHOTOGRAPHERS TO STRETCH BEYOND THE GOALS OF THE AGENCY AND CREATE A COMPLETE PORTRAIT OF THEIR COUNTRYMEN. -WHILE STRYKER GAVE THE PHOTOGRAPHERS A GREAT DEAL OF CREATIVE AUTONOMY, THE BUREAUCRAT IN HIM DEMANDED DETAILED ACCOUNTS OF THERE WHEREABOUTS. -STRYKER WAS RELENTLS IN HIS EFFORTS TO GET THE RESETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION'S WORK SEEN BY AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. HE BOMBARDED NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES, LIKE "SURVEY GRAPHIC" AND "US CAMERA" WITH PICTURES, ORGANIZED PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS AND ILLUSTRATED BOOKS FOR FREE. FOR STRYKER, IT WAS ALL ABOUT FEEDING THE FILE. -ONE THING STRYKER TAUGHT YOU, THAT BEFORE YOU GO ON A STORY BE PREPARED FOR IT BECAUSE THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN THAT YOU WON'T HAVE TIME TO TECHNICALLY GET YOURSELF TOGETHER. BUT BE READY ON THE INSTANT TO SHOOT, JUST LIKE THAT IF IT HAPPENS BECAUSE IT MAY NOT HAPPEN BUT ONCE. -STRYKER WOULD ALWAYS REALIZE THAT THEY WERE SLIPPING AT HIS COATTAIL, AND HE, BUT HE WOULDN'T GIVE IN. HE WENT AFTER THINGS THAT SPOKE OF DISASTER FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE IN AMERICA, HE SHOWED IT, AND NO MATTER WHAT, IT EVENTUALLY GOT TO THE PLACE WHERE THEY SAID LETS KILL THIS, LETS KILL THIS DEPARTMENT. IT'S NO GOOD, IT DOES MORE HARM. >> Narrator: WHILE STRYKER HAD MANAGED TO KEEP HIS ENEMIES AT BAY FOR YEARS, HE WAS NO MATCH FOR THE POLITICAL CHANGES USHERED IN BY AMERICA'S ENTRY INTO WORLD WAR TWO. -BY 1943, STRYKER ALSO KNEW THAT THE TIME HAD COME FOR HIM TO RESIGN. BUT FIRST HE HAD TO FIND A WAY TO PROTECT THE FILE FROM HIS MOST VIRULENT ENEMIES BOTH ON CAPITAL HILL AND WITHIN THE FEDERAL BUREAUS WHO WANTED THE AGENCY WIPED OUT WITHOUT A TRACE. HE TURNED TO HIS FRIEND ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, WHO AT THE TIME WAS THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS. TOGETHER THEY TOOK THEIR CASE DIRECTLY TO THE WHITE HOUSE. >> THIS RECORD IS IN ONE PIECE. -In 1937, the R.A. was subsumed into the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Farm Security Administration (FS.A.). Roy Stryker (1893-1976), who supervised the photographic activity of the R.A., continued with the FS.A., directing what was officially known as the "Historičal Section- Photographic." His job remained much the samne: he was to gather photographic evidence of the agency's good works and transmit these images to the press. Střyker's background as a photo editor consisted solely of his efforts to find illustrations for the textbook American Economic Life and the Means of its Improvement (1925), written by his mentor Columbia University professor Rexford Tugwell. When Tugwell moved to Washington to head the R.A., Stryker went with him. -Early in his tenure, Stryker envisioned a smooth system in which full-time photographers exhaustively covered the agency's good works around the country, and returned the images to the R.A. for swift nationwide distribution to media outlets. Budget restraints reduced his grandiose vision, yet Stryker still scheduled assignments, drafted shooting scripts, and decided which photographs would be distributed to media outlets ranging from Time magazine to the Junior Scholastic. By 1940, the agency claimed to be distributing an average of 1,400 images a month.' Stryker's pet idea of focusing on life in small towns may have come from conversations he had with sociologist Robert S. Lynd, who with Helen Lynd wrote the influential 1929 book Middletown: A Study in Modern America, a classic in-depth study of an average middle-American small çity. Stryker once bragged about his ability to shape views of e Depression that avoided tabloid voyeurism and social strife, saying, "You'l find no record of big people or big events ... There are pictures that say Depression, but there are no pictures of sit-down strikes, no apple salesmen on street corners, not a single shot of Wall Street, and absolutely no celebrities"

Lee Miller

photos at Buchenwald, Germany of beat up SS soldiers; instead of victim of Holocaust imagery turns camera on guards; transgressor being transgressed against (beaten) -photos in Hitler's bathtub -Lee Miller, original name Elizabeth Miller, (born April 23, 1907, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.—died July 21, 1977, Farley Farm House, near Chiddingly, East Sussex, England), American photographer, Surrealist artist, and model who might have been known primarily as the muse and lover of the Surrealist artist Man Ray had her son not discovered and promoted her exceptional work as a fashion and war photographer and recovered her reputation as an artist in her own right. -By 1943 Miller had become an accredited war correspondent for Vogue, and the following year she teamed up with Life photojournalist David E. Scherman. Together they followed the 83rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army as it advanced on the front lines. Miller became the first female photojournalist to do so. She photographed the Liberation of Paris, the battle of Saint-Malo, field hospitals in Normandy, and the liberation of both the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Her photographs, some of the first photographic evidence of the Holocaust, were a horrifying glimpse of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the camps. From Dachau she and Scherman went to Hitler's private apartment in Munich. She had Scherman photograph her washing herself in Hitler's bathtub, her muddy boots on the bathmat. In 1945 Miller traveled throughout eastern Europe to see and photograph the devastating aftermath of the war. -bring here some images by Lee Miller Miller was a really interesting character I've spent a tremendous amount of time researching her 4 years she was an American photographer born and raised in Poughkeepsie who started her career in her late teens in New York when she was kind of discovered precipitously on the street and made a model for Vogue magazine she did that for a few years and eventually I got tired of it and moved on to Paris in 1929 where she found the photographer Man Ray and became his Studio assistant and model and love her for the next two and a half years basically imbibing photography through this is very surrealist immersion in a program it was the height of the surrealist movement in Paris she has been interested in photography for a long time from the other side of the camera is a model but then took it up in her own hands at that point she made several stops along the way should a very eventful life in 1939 she had just moved in to live in London with the surrealist painter bullet pen rows when the war started and she used her old contacts with the magazine to get herself a job as a staff photographer in the London office of UK Folk where she was primarily baking soda fashion editorial pictures in the studio when the blitz happened and they started the Germans are bombing London she went out into the streets and started photographing the aftermath of the blitz again obviously with a very surrealist i 4 of an inch shorter than started actually covering women in the war effort for Vogue doing photographs of nurses and other and women recruited into the effort that were published in Vogue and in short order could have invented a job for herself as the war correspondent photographer for Vogue magazine Center gate resting position to be in she moved on after that to photograph the Allied Advance through France after Normandy The Liberation of Paris move down then into the the Allied Advance through Germany and while she was there. She was one of the first photographer along with bourke-white present at the liberation of the camp at buchenwald and so the two of them were here at the same moment if you look at Miller's photograph here she's not she doesn't emphasize that you know the emotions of the people of the camp it's a an image showing a line of people we don't even see their faces right there kind of cropped off we just see the the Striped Pajamas of the prisoner uniforms as they stand next to a heap of ashes and bits of bone that came out of one of the crematoria at the camp it's kind of intense testimony to the cost of humanity of the place coming from a very different sort of background than bourke-white And someone who was explicitly processing things more as a surrealist than as a kind of more classically oriented photojournalist one of the interesting things that Miller did and book involved was take a series of these images of captured SS guards from the account basically these were people who had been guards during is it here the internment of the prisoners during the functioning of the camp undo the German and then one of the things that took place quite the seem to be fairly frequently when one of these Cancers and countered the occupying force would surround the camp and sort of hold back for an hour or two and allow the inmates to Revenge themselves on the guards and so what we see here are several of these going to give you the contact sheet of these guys has just been chilling she turns the camera on these captured SS guards who had their faces bashed in the two of the left for two young guys who apparently every time anybody can hang the other cell got on their knees and beg for mercy there's one guy who seems she has a picture of a black eye but nothing much else wrong with him who's still still to finally getting the Nazi salute in her photograph she's document take the the faces of the perpetrators here which is something that in my research I discovered to be really very unusual rather than trying to kind of emphasize the victimhood of the suffering of the people who were interned in the Cavs she's Furious and you're interested in and literally kind of looking at these face-to-face coming face-to-face with these captured Camp guards there are very very few examples of other photographers who did this and I think it comes from her brace of certain surrealist ideas and what kind of approach that wants to understand transgression and wants to sort of also coming out of her own kind of deep personal anger that was emerging with regard to the Germans and wanting to sort of document them in this way not long after booking fault Miller wound up also is one of the first journalist at the Dachau Concentration Camp which is just outside of Munich for the liberation of that camp this particular photograph I find very haunting from the images that she made their this is a dead SS man whose immersed in a canal that runs through the center of the camp complex and thought how to redo the number of ss who were taken aside by the incoming American soldiers and a number of the wound up page summarily executed and I believe this is one of them in his body had fallen into the canal all the way she photographs this as a surrealist again with it the distortions of the man's face in the end of stream of water starts to appear like some kind of Frankenstein monster or something emerging out of the water and it's and it's a really poignant photograph and one that again and she sort of emphasized she's not looking at pathetic images of skinny yellow skin and bones survivors she's looking at the people who that she's judging kind of responsible for this act and making your recognizing what a monster the sort of thing was okay so after World War II photojournalism took another turn basically World War II had put photojournalism on steroids for the duration as covering the war was the biggest story that anybody was ever going to be on and it boosted the profile on the importance of Life magazine another picture magazines like it in the aftermath of the war