13) Imaging the Poor: Photography and the Great Depression

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, his main aim was to provide relief in his first 100 days in office. He introduced schemes like that to promote economic development. The Federal Arts Programme was one such scheme. Roosevelt wanted to hire artists within the new civil works administration (CWA) which put them to work doing all kinds of things.

In December 1933, one million dollars of CWA money was given to public arts projects. They discouraged controversial and 'foreign' art, but the artists mainly received a lot of freedom. They believed art had to connect with social and political issues of the day, which became particularly clear in photography. The emergence of photography changed the way people saw and represented the world.

Photography emerged in the 1830s when they managed to fix an image. The fixed images were known as Daguerreotypes. They produced just one image that was fixed onto a copper sheet, but they were very fragile. They produced very beautiful, very sharp and very focused images. But they only captured certain things that stay in place for a long enough period of time; moving things became invisible.

The Calotype/Talbotype became the second way of fixing images which could produce multiple copies of an image because they produced negative pictures where a light would be shined through and the image would become positive. They also involved another step, printing. Although, this type lacked detail.

Other changes took place in the 1850s like the Callodian/wet plate process. This allowed photographers to make more copies and produced more detailed images that the Calotype.

So, by the middle of the 19th century, the photograph proper had arrived. Sharp, reproducible images were made possible that were persuasive and realistic.

By the 1850s, viewing and collecting photos had become a popular activity among the middle class. By the end of the decade, photography had become even more popular and cheaper. The Civil War was particularly documented during this time. Documentary photography took pictures of the destruction, the battlefield and dead bodies. There's few signs of actual battle in the photos, but there were before and after shots. Photographers had to get permission to go to the battlefield but this was often denied as they would just get in the way.

The photos themselves were taken under very trying conditions and they took a long period of time to capture. Previously, photos taken in war were keepsakes for families. Photos of the soldiers were taken in a 'carte de visite' which had 4 lenses and attached 4 photos of the soldiers onto cards. This kind of photography then developed into pictures of celebrities, then land marks, and then into pictures that could be sold to the popular market.

Photographers had to carry a lot of heavy equipment with them as well as a studio, and the images took a long time to develop. So, it was very difficult taking pictures of war.

Jacob Riis was a very influential progressive photographer journalist. He created much urban renewal. In 'How the Other Half Lives', he exposed the underside of the new cities, showing how immigrants were living. He was a Danish immigrant and wanted to publicise their plight and bring change. He was one of a growing number of reformers.

He bought one of the new lightweight, hand-held cameras that were developed in the 1880s. They no longer needed the big heavy tripods of the Civil War allowing him to take unsual, candid-looking photos. The development of roll film and magnesium flash powder that became available in the 1880s as a portable light source also made it easier. But it was very bright, smoky, and set things on fire. Riis was very clumsy with it which scared people, once nearly blinding himself, and another time setting an apartment on fire that had a few blind tenants. But, this combined with the detective camera opened up a new field of social photography. He organised 'raiding parties' where he burst into apartments and surprised his subjects, firing big pistols from which they shot the flash powder. He used his photos to transform the American view on poverty and made his photos the subject of his 'illustrative lectures'.

The half tone printing process allowed photos to be printed in magazines and newspapers. It made the printing of Riis' book possible where he appealed to the middle class to try and create change. He helped to bring about progressive reform and housing in New York.

Lewis Hine was another progressive photographer, but unlike Riis, he preserved the respect and dignity of his subjects. For example, he took pictures of child labour and of immigrants showing hope and aspiration rather than the threatening pictures of Riis. He wanted to document the condition of the child labourers in the US and was a prominent campaigner against child labour. He wanted the viewer to empathise with the subjects of his photos, not pity or fear them.

Riis and Hine seem to begin the genre of socially committed photography, but they clearly had different strategies.

People were believing photos in ways they were no longer believing newspapers. Roosevelt's new deal institutionalised documentary photography as its chief means of gathering information around the world. Photographers were sent all over the world to gather pictures to show the administration who would shape their policies around them. An example can be seen in the work surrounding the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a new deal office to aid farmers. Farmers were particularly hard hit by the depression and it led many families to head west in the search of work. The FSA was set up to help their situation. The photographic division was set up in 1937. Photographers were sent to different regions around the US with background information and shooting scripts, then the resulting images were available free of charge to news magazines and newspapers. The photographers had to hand in all their negatives from which iconic pictures were chosen. Dorothea Lange was an example of one of these photographers.

Photos of the plight of share croppers, tenant farmers and dustbowl migrants forced Americans to confront the depression era's reality. Visual irony was used a lot in the photos.

The 1930s also saw the rise of the documentary book. They used words and photos to describe social situations. Their point was to make the reader feel as though they were there first hand.

You Have Seen Their Faces by Margaret Bourke White and Erskine Caldwell from 1937 was seen as unique at the time. The captions with the pictures in this book underscored their meaning. The captions were never actually said by the subjects though, it was just a strategy to elicit pity.

Let us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans from 1942 brought a fiction writer and photographer together. Their book had no captions with the pictures though, the photos were in a separate section of the book with no writing at all. It tried to show the beauty and dignity in farmers' lives.