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Walker Evans & Dorothea Lange. Photojournalism. Farm Security Administration (FSA) 1935-38 Lived/researched in San Francisco, CA -- lived in the homes of people she studied Great Depression Displaced farm families Migrant workers Japanese internment
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Photojournalism • Farm Security Administration (FSA) 1935-38 • Lived/researched in San Francisco, CA -- lived in the homes of people she studied • Great Depression • Displaced farm families • Migrant workers • Japanese internment • Moving experience: Lange was disturbed by the racial and civil rights issues raised by the Japanese internment & quickly found herself at odds with her employer and her subjects' persecutors, the United States government • Farm Security Administration (FSA) 1935-38 • Lived/ researched in southern states – stayed with the people he studies • Great Depression • farming families • Rural poverty • NY subway w/ hidden camera • Florida • Cuba • Moving experience: Rural poverty
Similar paths? • Born in 1903 • Exhibition: MoMA 1938 • Publish: Let us now Praise Famous Men; Many are Called • Mission: “Make sense of combination of words & photographs” and make pictures that are “literate, authorative, transcendent” • Born in 1895 • Exhibition:MoMA1965 • SAIC 1960 • Publish: An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion • Mission: “Feature the words of the workers themselves”
“You didn’t tell the story right!” • According to Burroughs’ son, the family was “cast in a light that they couldn’t do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant.” • I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet… • According to Thompson's son… Burroughs’ son Thompson’s son
New York Times Critic A.D. Coleman • Coleman called Lange's photographs "documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime • Coleman declared how greatly Evans had shaped his impression of the recent past; his photography “has all our memories so that we can no longer separate our fact from fiction”. • “Lange dealt with chance, while Evans deals with fate.” • Evan did not promise or even suggest that a better future for American society was within reach. • Confiscation • “The grief Evans evokes may be quieter, but there is no tempering it ever.”