¶ … Great Depression, Walker Evans worked primarily as a photojournalist and documentarian, using the medium of photography to capture American life in visual detail. Many of Evans's most famous photographs appear in his book, co-written with James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The book was in part funded by grants issued by New Deal programs the Roosevelt administration designed to address systemic poverty. Photojournalism was integral to achieving the goals of the New Deal, which is why Evans and Agee were able to compile their historiography. In the photo of Allie Mae Burroughs, Evans depicts the primary purpose of his research: to offer proof of the effects of income disparity and economic exploitation. In 1981, Sherrie Levine reproduced several of Walker Evans's images, including that of Allie Mae Burroughs. Reproducing the photos transformed the original images, not necessarily in terms of its content or form, but in terms of its politics and semantics. The original photo situated the photographer as actor empowered by the state against the subject. Thus, Evans engaged in "othering," even if he intended to communicate the abject poverty of American sharecroppers. Levine redefines the role of photography, divorces the medium from the message, and opens the image up for ongoing discursive action. In the photograph, Allie Mae Burroughs stands against what is most likely a barn building. The image is a true portrait, which captures the head and bust of the subject. Her dark hair is parted to one side and pulled back. Burroughs is thin; both her cheekbones and collarbones are visible....
Her brow is noticeably furrowed, and likewise, her lips are pursed. With the pursed lips and frowning eyes, Burroughs appears tense, concerned, and possibly even angry. The shape of her lips also suggests that she may have lost most of her teeth. Even if the viewer of the image had no idea that it was taken in Alabama during the Great Depression, it would be apparent that this is a portrait of a poor woman. When the image is fully decontextualized as with the Levine reproduction, it does not entirely lose its documentary power because the content of the image does have a universal and timeless quality in that it conveys the human condition: including salient elements like poverty and oppression. Yet most viewers of Levine's work knew as much about the context and content of the photo as Evans's viewers knew about the content and context of his. For Levine, the image of an image becomes a commentary not just on poverty and oppression, but also on the potential for journalism to become an exploitative medium.
His painting (social realism) called "Approaching Storm" is a remarkable portrayal of a man walking up a hill with a bucket of water and two donkeys waiting to be told what to do. In the distance is a menacing storm. The website (Twecht.tripod) says that this farm could possibly have been a beautiful place to live at one point in time…but now it is gray and windy…all life in
Dorothy Lange and Documentary Photography Life is documented daily, whether in newspaper photographs of world events, in feature magazines of faraway places and in photo albums of family snapshots. Essentially, all photography is a documentary of whatever is being photographed for whatever reason. However, traditionally, the mention of documentary photography brings up familiar images from a few twentieth century photographers, such as Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Roy Stryker, Arthur Rothstein and
On a community level, getting to know one's neighbors, focusing on the local, even if one commutes to somewhere far away (and questioning the value of a job with a long community, if that job is not 'worth it,' in terms of time and personal sacrifice) is another building-block of creating a viable local community. Creating community parks, acting as a local advocate to preserve community open spaces, organizing neighborhood
Media and Conflict The existence of a pro-business, pro-government bias led to ineffectual journalistic coverage of U.S. unemployment during the period leading up to the 2008-2009 recession. In what has come to be known as the Great Recession because of its comparability to the Great Depression, the U.S. unemployment rate reached historic highs. The magnitude of the recession was such that economists and policy-makers should have been better prepared to manage
They went into a spending frenzy that would carry them though the next decade. They bought houses, started families and settled down to a life of normalcy after a decade of chaos. Illustrations began to return to resemble that of fine are of earlier times. The Invitation. Ben Stahl. Date unknown magazine photo. Al Parker. Date unknown Rise of the Atomic Age (1950-1960) The prosperity that came with the end of the
International style of architecture was a major style that emerged, and rose in popularity, in the 1920s and 1930s. The term "International Style" stems from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson written to record an International Exhibition of Modern Architecture that was held at the Museum of Modern Art. This occurred in New York City in 1932. This International Exhibition not only identified, but
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