New York Times article: "Picturing the Depression

In a New York Times' Sunday Book Review, David Oshinky reviews Linda Gordon’s book Dorthea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits – a biography about the photographer who took the iconic “Migrant Mother” (above) and who worked for the Farm Security Administration along with Walker Evans.  I found the article interesting, but also relevant to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It outlines Lange’s philosophy and approach to photographing her depression-era subjects saying, “[Lange was] an ambivalent radical, deeply sympathetic to the plight of the migrants yet uncomfortable with the chaos that social conflict inevitably produced,” and that made me wonder: is that the same philosophy Evans shared?  “Lange stressed the inner emotions of those facing injustice and deprivation.”  To compare, I personally don’t think Evans was concerned with expressing the inner emotions of his subjects.  His photos of people – which are outnumbered by landscapes – seem to be dominated by blank stares and emotionless faces (that is, the people are neither visibly upset or happy).  As Professor Irmscher showed us in class, Evans thoughtfully chose to publish the photo of Flora Merry Lee and Margaret Ricketts where they weren’t smiling for a photo.  Instead, Margaret is more stoic towards the camera and her emotions cannot be easily described.  In other photos, the emotions of the subjects are just as difficult to pinpoint.  The families don’t look visibly happy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they unhappy. In contrast, “Lange provided an alternative to the photography of wretchedness, which centered on the misery of beaten-down victims, as well as to the Popular Front mythology, which showed earnest, well-muscled men and women laboring together in fields and factories to produce a Soviet-style paradise on earth. Lange saw America as a worthy work in progress, incomplete and capable of better. By portraying her subjects as nobler than their current conditions, she emphasized the strength and optimism of our national character. She became, in Gordon’s words, “America’s pre-eminent photographer of democracy.””  Perhaps Evans took the approach Lange tried to avoid.  He focuses on the subjects’ destitute existence - not masking their conditions, or trying to uplift them.  His subjects aren’t portrayed as strong “fighters” of the Depression, but instead, people living their life “in this way.”  Their wretchedness is at the center of many of his photographs and he does not emphasize strength or optimism.  However – while Evans and Lange’s approach to photography differ, his purpose was not to disenfranchise these people.  Evans was not looking to sugarcoat or glorify these families through his work, and maybe his photographs are more closely representative of the reality of the situation.  I think there is something very powerful in reporting the truth because it puts less emphasis on Evan’s point of view or inherent bias towards purpose, and more weight on the audience’s reaction to the “truth” of his photography.