 Mother and Baby (detail) Dorothea Lange | Tulelake, CA | 1939 |
Two exhibitions of documentary photography on view this month call attention to the almost shocking plasticity of the medium as it has been used, in various ways, to capture a piece of what we like to think of as "reality"—a concept that, when placed under serious scrutiny, quickly collapses.
At the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, there is a special exhibition on view that is truly not to be missed. "This Great Nation Will Endure: Photographs of the Great Depression" assembles almost 200 images drawn from the nearly 80,000 photographs (and another 68,000 unprinted negatives) left behind by the "Historical Section" of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), directed by the incomparable Roy Stryker. Included are some of the most memorable—and most widely reproduced—photographs of all time, such as Arthur Rothstein's photo of a Dust Bowl farmer and his two sons trotting into a stiff headwind and Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, a close-up portrait of a strong but weathered woman and three of her children, bravely but almost hopelessly staring down adversity.
The goal of these works was to create a visual record of Americans in need during the Great Depression, in order to generate support for FDR's New Deal programs in Congress and beyond. Stryker marshaled an impressive group of photographers to document the extreme needs of farmers, sharecroppers, fruit pickers, and others (even city dwellers), secure in the knowledge that once revealed in such graphic fashion, the situation would be impossible to ignore. The current exhibition features work by 10 FSA photographers, from the previously mentioned Lange and Rothstein to such notables as Ben Shahn, Gordon Parks, Marion Post Wolcott, and Walker Evans.
One of the first things that struck me on entering the exhibition was the installation itself. The antithesis of a fine-art photography show, the exhibit has no mattes or frames in sight, no prized "vintage" prints; the images are plastered across almost all the available wall space, not so much hung in "salon style" as laid out like an extended magazine spread. The images are grouped geographically: "The Great Plains and the Southwest," "California and the Far West," "The South," and so on. The photographs themselves are obviously newly generated prints (the exhibition pamphlet gives credit for "design and fabrication" of the show to People+Machines of New York), some blown up to enormous, nearly floor-to-ceiling scale. While many of the images on display have gone on to form an essential aesthetic contribution to the history of photography (Walker Evans' cool, objective dispatches are an art world favorite), this means of display emphasizes the content of the work over the preciousness (and market value) of unique, vintage prints.
While this mode of presentation can, at times, seem a bit too synthetic, a bit too contemporary—these are, after all, now historical images—it remains faithful to the original intent of the works, which were commissioned by Stryker and his agency explicitly for their propaganda value, not as works of art. The images were reproduced in various formats, distributed to members of Congress, and perhaps more importantly, were sent out to newspapers and magazines throughout the country, where picture editors had their way with them.
The most striking part of the FDR Library exhibit is a section that calls attention to the various ways in which these photographs were used, and the many ways in which their meaning can be manipulated or changed through cropping, juxtaposition, and a million other means of presentation. A photograph of a white Southern land owner, resting his foot on the bumper of his car, surrounded by a small group of his black sharecroppers, loses its incisive racial overtones when reproduced, enlarged, and severely cropped, in a book of Archibald MacLeish poems. Bled off the edges of the page, the pudgy white man (now apparently by himself) seems more comical than anything, the caricature of the Southern "good ol' boy."
Similarly, Gordon Parks's iconic image of a black cleaning woman working in a government building in Washington, DC—proudly wielding her mop like a battle standard, framed by a large American flag hanging on the wall behind her—takes on an entirely different feeling when seen (in an interactive kiosk) in the context of the photographs Parks took when he followed her home, taking care of her grandchildren, and so on.
The significance of context in the meaning and consumption of ostensibly "documentary" photographs is the focus of an exhibition opening at the Center for Photography at Woodstock on April 9. "Framing War" is the master's thesis exhibition of Judy Ditner, a degree candidate at Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies. The images in this show, by photographers Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, and Antonin Kratochvil (all members of the VII photo agency), are all drawn from reportage on the war in Iraq. According to the press release, the show will "investigate recent changes in the field of photojournalism including digital advances, embedded and unilateral reporting, and the increasingly smooth transition from news contexts to books and exhibitions."
"Documentary" is an incredibly loaded term. The FSA project charged it with a desire to effect social change; as practiced by generations of photographers since, it has taken on a variety of different inflections, each dependent on the objectives and worldview of the person wielding the camera. The recent upsurge of the (fine art) photography market has thrown gasoline on the fire, accelerating the aesthetic fetishization of images that just yesterday appeared in the newspaper. There will be a panel discussion on April 10 by photographers, critics, editors, and others at CPW on these and other issues in conjunction with the exhibition.
The importance of critically understanding how these contexts alter—and construct—the meaning(s) of these documentary images is as essential today as being able to read, if we are to comprehend what the hell is going on, beyond the "no-spin zones" and the ideological divides of our own historical moment.