Photo 1 Lecture 21

Golden Age of News
Life Magzaine May 21, 1945	Worksheet #6 Due

Art & Documentary
Prior to the 1930s, documentary photographers gave little consideratin to form
In the 30s, many photographers highly influenced by New Vision and Group f/64 approaches
Photographers began seeking an even mixture of art and objectivity
Term "documentary" came into wide use during 1930s


Jacob Riis. Home of an Italian Ragpicker, New York. 1888. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1982.	Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936.

Dorothea Lange. Tractored Out, Childress County, Texas. 1939. http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/48332#	The Great Depression 1929 - 1941

	Global economic crisis
	Numerous bank failures and factory closures sparked by the 1929 NY Stock Market crash
	1 out of 4 workers unemployed at a time when most families survived on one income
	Dramatic drop in industrial production
	1931 drought, wind storms and over farming turned the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl

The New Deal 1933 - 1937	Dorothea Lange. Men Walking Towards Los Angeles. c. 1935. http://www.dorothealangephotos.com/

Direct relief, economic recovery and financial reform
New Deal programs oversaw loans, flood control, migrant camps, agricultural education, work relief and the creation of the social security system

FSA. Man in a Dust Storm. c. 1935. http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd20.htm	Resettlement Administration (later known as the Farm Security Administration) intended to move distressed farmers into more economically viable service and industrial jobs
	Roy E. Stryker appointed chief of the historical section
	Historical section's aim was to gather visual evidence in support of the RA's good works and to distribute these images, free of charge, to the nation's news agencies

Dorothea Lange
http://www.dorothealangephotos.com/images/070316201143_dorothea_lange_on_top_of_a_car_LG.jpg

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions.

I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two.

She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.

There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it." - Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936.
http://livinginstereo.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/MIgrant%20Mother%20by%20Dorothea%20Lange.jpg

Midweed Pictorial spread using Migrant Mother image. October 17, 1936.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.

Bill Ganzel. Florence Owens Thompson and her daughters Norma, Katherine and Ruby. 1979.
http://www.ganzelgroup.com/media/ggMigrant.jpg

Walker Evans. Shoeshine Stand. 1936.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(fsa+8c52458))

Louisiana

Walker Evans. Louisiana. 1936.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne. Taschen, Koln, 2005.

Allie Mae Burroughs

Walker Evans. Allie Mae Burroughs. 1936.
http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/may1text/images/WalkerEvans.jpg

Burrough's Kitchen

Walker Evans. Kitchen in Floyd Burroughs's Home. 1936.

1938 Walker Evans's work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's first show devoted to a photographer