I glance amusedly at the photo placed before me. The bright and smiling faces of my family stare back me, their expressions depicting complete happiness. My mind drifted back to the events of the day that the photo was taken. It was Memorial Day and so, in the spirit of tradition my large extended family had gathered at the grave of my great grandparents. The day was hot and I had begged my mother to let me join my friends at the pool. However, my mother had refused. Inconsolable, I spent most of the day moping about sulkily. The time came for a group picture and so my grandmother arranged us all just so and then turned to me saying, "You'd better smile Emma or you'll look back at this and never forgive yourself." Eager to please and knowing she would never let it go if I didn't, I plastered on a dazzling smile. One might say a picture is worth a thousand words. However, who is to say they are the accurate or right words? During the 1930s, photographers were hired by the FSA to photograph the events of the Great Depression. These photographers used their images, posed or accurate, to sway public opinion concerning the era. Their work displayed an attempt to fulfill the need to document what was taking place and the desire to influence what needed to be done.
The 1920s were a time of leisure and carelessness. The Great War had ended in 1918 and everyone was eager to return to some semblance of normalcy. The end of the war and the horrors and atrocities that it resulted in now faced millions of people. Easily obtainable credit and rapidly rising stock prices prompted many to invest, resulting in big payoffs and newfound wealth for many. However, overproduction and inflated stock prices increased by corrupt industrialists culminat...
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... portrayed real events and real people who were beautiful in their own way. "These pictures impress one as real life of a vast section of the American people," commented one viewer of FSA photos exhibited in an April 1938 show called "How American People Live." This statement summarized the feelings of most Americans who viewed the photos. Because of their success, these photographs have become the visual representation of the Great Depression.
These photographers were intended to help a struggling people by documenting their plight and introducing it to the public. Their work and the photographs they produced romanticized the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and garnered public support for New Deal programs. Like my photograph of my family, the FSA photographs may not depict to exactness the events of the period, but they helped to form the mood of a nation.
The Great Depression was one of the hardest eras America has ever had to face. It tore families apart, leaving them with nothing but despair. Wood and Shahn use their pictures, American Gothic and Rural Rehabilitation Client, to depict this feeling of anguish. American Gothic displays the anxiety of those who experienced the first ripples of the Depression and Rural Rehabilitation Client shows the sheer desperation of those who lived during the worst days of the Depression. Through these two works of art, the feelings of hope and hopelessness are powerfully represented.
During the Great Depression, people went to the movies to get their mind off things and to forget about things temporarily. Life was portrayed a few different ways during the Great Depression. Different genres of film gave different perspectives on what life was like. The three genres compared are comedy, gangster, and musical films. Room Service and Modern Times are two films in the comedy genre and they portrayed a worry-free lifestyle. The Public Enemy is a gangster film and it had a dangerous lifestyle. Last, but not least, is Gold Diggers of 1933 and it is a pretty happy film. These films all had one thing in common though; the characters all had problems with money, which greatly relates to the Great Depression.
The film “Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the FSA/OWI Photographers” amplified how things were and how the photographers that worked on the project were affected from taking these photographs. When Dorothea said, “If you come close to the truth, there are consequences” was especially true. These photographers had to see things that could never be unseen. The photographs that I discussed in the paragraphs above show how the photographers were affected from what they had to see. Also, they had the control to be able to show what they wanted the viewers to get from the photos. In the end, sometimes one has to push the limits of the truth in order to get what one is really looking for and this is exactly what all of the photographers did for the FSA
The Great Depression was a national tragedy in the 1930’s causing many citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. For artists and people who were not considered to have sills of necessity, this was a time of great fear. President Franklin Roosevelt administered $27 million, which would be $461 million in 2014 dollars (Musher 1) to art projects. These projects were sponsored by the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which created jobs for around forty million American artists, who would otherwise be forced to end their art careers or starve.
The photos work on our Pathos reactions presenting a sight we never thought possible, causing us to react with sympathy as we process the unthinkable. Our hearts ache for the cute, lovable animals as they resemble the homeless, we city dwellers so often see, but often refuse to acknowledge.
Walker Evans was a renowned photographer whose best known for his depictions of The Great Depression through his photographs. Through this medium people were able to view the negative effects the Great Depression was having on the American populace in the north and south. The photograph by Walker Evans titled “South Street, New York” shows three men outside a building, but on closer inspection it reveals some of the horrors of the Great Depression to the viewer. For instance, there's a man who's inspecting at a newspaper, dressed in a suit and nice shoes who's probably looking for a job to support himself, or a family. Meanwhile to the right of the gentleman in the suit there is another man who is sleeping on a sheet of cardboard, most likely
"A photograph is not merely a substitute for a glance. It is a sharpened vision. It is the revelation of new and important facts." ("Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History."). Sid Grossman, a Photo League photographer expressed this sentiment, summarizing the role photography had on America in the 1940’s and 50’s. During this era, photojournalism climaxed, causing photographers to join the bandwagon or react against it. The question of whether photography can be art was settled a long time ago. Most major museums now have photography departments, and the photographs procure pretty hefty prices. The question of whether photojournalism or documentary photography can be art is now the question at hand. Art collectors are constantly looking to be surprised; today they are excited by images first seen in last week’s newspapers as photojournalism revels in the new status as art “du jour” or “reportage art”.
On a fateful day in October of 1929, the New York Stock Exchange saw an immeasurable loss of over $9 billion US dollars. This may not seem so severe when compared the mass wealth of some corporations today, but when adjusted for inflation, that loss equates to over $100 billion in today’s money, which is more than the entire net worth of any of the world’s richest men. Only a few years after the conclusion of World War I, America experienced a social and economic explosion unlike any other. The 1920’s were part of an era of mass political and social change that saw the decline of traditional rural lifestyles. For the first time in the country’s history, the ratio between urban and rural population swayed in favor of the big cities.
The photo was explained the whole Depression Era and the circumstances of migrant workers. The mother in the photo, Florence Thompson was a strong woman. The photo was characterize the hardship of women during the Great Depression. It shows the upright difficulty she was facing in caring for her children for food, and shelter. The face of the mother showed how she struggled staying with her children out on the street. It was horrible time for any one in that period of time.
The Great Depression from 1929 to 1933 was perhaps one of the darkest times in the United States. The desperation had spread to every single corner of the nation. Millions of people had lost their jobs and savings, parents were not able to provide food for their children. In the meantime, this greatest despair was to become the best opportunity for many outstanding artists and their works to sparkle.
In 1936, Dorothea Lange took a series of photographs, one of which is “Migrant Mother” and this photograph is undeniably one of the most powerful and impactful symbols of the Great Depression. There is so much captured into one moment that its significance is doubled, talking about unity as well as a chaotic lifestyle during one of the hardest moments in history. Within the image, the woman is used as the subject and is appropriated within a symbolic framework of significance. It seems to be a simple photograph of a woman and her children, yet it tells the story and the struggle of a generation. The image, “Migrant Mother,” evokes uncertainty and desolation resulting from continual poverty during the Great Depression.
Arthur Rothstein was a photographer from New York, NY. He was born in 1915 and raised in the Bronx with his immigrant parents. During his time of being a student at Columbia University, he found out about the University Camera Club. In this club he met Roy Stryker who was a professor hired by Franklin Roosevelt under the visionary Farm Security Administration. Roy Stryker enrolled Arthur as the first real photographer of the FSA (Farm Security Administration). In the next 5 years after he is given this title, Arthur spends his time shooting some of the most iconic images from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Rothstein took around 80,000 pictures. These pictures were to show the full impact of what the Great Depression and The Dust Bowl
Imagine being a teenage kid and getting out of bed at 6:00 AM every morning to feed the your family’s animals before breakfast begins. After eating breakfast, you go to school in a horse and buggy passing people on foot that are not as affluent as you are. You get to school and begin all of your classwork, but once your studies have been completed, you don’t get to to to basketball practice, watch TV or text your friends because you have to go work on the farm...again. This is what life was like in the early 1900’s. For many Americans who lived during the time of The Great Depression, enduring each day seemed to be a hardship, and simply getting by was all that they could focus on. The people of America needed some iconic symbol of hope to help remind them of the strength of their
The image of the Migrant Mother is both a news photo and a documentary photo. Using the genre, news photography, allowed the photo to be seen throughout the country by politicians, and everyday people alike. It could also be classified as a documentary photo because the image has the ability to capture a significant event almost a century later. The memories that this photograph produces, allows us to sum up in a single image of the entire history of 1936.
Social realist art, which dominated in the US during the Depression, communicates the concerns of the masses: artists question the treatment of the poor and praise American values embodied in ordinary people. In painting, Thomas Hart Benton’s murals depict an extravagance juxtaposed alongside honest, hardworking people, calling into question the actions and greed leading up to the Great Depression. Benton’s murals in both subject and medium penetrate the American political landscape, purporting such ideal values as hardworking and honesty. In photography, Dorothea Lange captures in the flesh the realities of the working poor. In her photograph Migrant Mother (1936) Lange portrays simultaneously the oppression and resilience of the working