Week 6-7 America from the Great Depression to WWII

Week 6-7 America from the Great Depression to WWII

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

• The Farm Security Administration

The Farm Security Administration (now the Farm Service Agency) was started in 1933. Between 1935-1944, photographers and writers were hired to create documents illustrating the poverty of farmers. Many Depression-era photographers who are well-known today got their start with the FSA, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee and Gordon Parks..

Eleven photographers all together worked for the FSA in the capacity. The idea was to create documents supporting the need for social reform of the poor conditions among tenant farmers. These were not the large-scale farms one sees today. Altogether, 250,000 photographs of rural poverty were created, a national art project. Less than half survive and those are held by the Library of Congress.

• Week 6-7: Rural Sociology

America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI 1935-1945

(the impact of the Great Depression on farmers, life during the Dust Bowl, rural and small-town life, poverty)

Read

Bill Ganzel, Farming in the 1930s, http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_14.html

• Robert Frank

For photographic documentation of America AFTER World War 2, in mid century, please see the work of Robert Frank

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-robert-franks-photographs-helped-define-america

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/arts/design/photographs-robert-frank-the-americans-.html

• Essay 3 due

Essay 3: (Goals 1,2,3; Core Goals 1,2,3,4,5) contrasting and comparing 2 Farm Security Administration photographers. Examine:

Library of Congress, American Memory Projecthttp://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html

Contrast and compare two photographers or photographs from two different photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration from the list below:

Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, John Vachon, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks.

What similarities and differences do you see in the intent of the photographer and the realized images (see livinghistoryfarm.org link above for interviews with some of these photographers)? How can those similarities and differences be explained? Use at least two sociological concepts to inform your essay.

*THERE IS CURRENTLY A SHOW OF DOROTHEA LANGE’S WORK AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN NEW YORK CITY. YOU HAVE THE OPTION, IN PLACE OF THIS E$SSAY ASSIGNMENT, OF GOING TO THE MUSEUM AND WRITING A REVIEW USING SIX SPECIFIC WORKS IN THE SHOW, WITH CAMERA PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE IMAGES BEING DISCUSSED.