History Of Photography

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Jacob RIIS, Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard StreetTenement—“Five Cents a Spot,” from Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives, 1890

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Jacob RIIS, Sewing and Starving in an Elizabeth Street Attic, 1890,

from Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives

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RIIS, Bandit’s Roost, 1888

from How the Other Half Lives

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Lewis HINE

N.Y. Tenement Family Gets Fresh Air on a Hot Day

c. 1910

Gelatin silver print

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Lewis HINE, Breaker Boys in a Coal Mine, South Pittston, Pa., 1911, gelatin silver print

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Lewis HINE, Ten-Year Old Spinner, North Carolina Cotton Mill, 1908-9, gelatin silver print

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ROTHSTEIN, Dust Storm, Cimarron County, 1937, gelatin silver print

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Resettlement Administration/
Farm Security Admin

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• New Deal-era (FDR) Gvt agency founded in 1935 to strike at causes of chronic rural poverty

• period (~1931 to WWII) of economic & social upheaval

• high unemployment, labor unrest, agricultural blight

• internal migrations

• RA renamed FSA in 1936

• RA goal to convert land to best possible use

• need to publicize agency’s activities to the public and Congress: power of visual images to frame issues and influence audiences

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Historical Section
photography project of the RA/FSA

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• headed by Roy Stryker

• photographers: Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Carl Mydans, Russell Lee

• ~270,000 images of America and its people

• filed in the Library of Congress under 12 major headings:

•The Land; Towns and Cities; People, Homes, and Living Conditions; Transport; Work: Agriculture, Commerce, Manufacturing; War, Medicine, and Health; Religion; Intellectual and Creative Activity; Social and Personal Activity; Miscellaneous

• photos published in Survey Graphic, Time, Fortune, Today, Nation’s Business, Literary Digest, Birth Control Review, Collier’s, Look, and U.S. Camera

• 23 exhibitions mounted

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Finnegan, “Picturing Poverty”

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•What is Finnegan’s main argument?

•What does she use as support for her argument?

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Arthur ROTHSTEIN
Untitled [Wife and Child of a Sharecropper, Washington Cty, Arkansas]
August 1935

approximates reproduction in U.S. Camera 1936

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Arthur ROTHSTEIN
Untitled [Wife and Child of a Sharecropper, Washington Cty, Arkansas]
August 1935
(Library of Congress photo)

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Dorothea LANGE
Untitled [Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California]
1936

approximates reproduction in U.S. Camera 1936

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Dorothea LANGE
Untitled [Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California]
1936
digital file from original negative, Library of Congress

approximates the reproduction in Survey Graphic, September 1936, accompanying the story “From the Ground Up”

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Walker Evans, Untitled [Negros standing in line for food at the camp for flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas], 1937

approximates image published in U.S. Camera 1939 with the caption:
“Wonderful pictures—but am I my brother’s keeper?”

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Walker Evans, Untitled [Negros standing in line for food at the camp for flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas], 1937

approximates image published in U.S. Camera 1939 with the caption:
“Wonderful pictures—but am I my brother’s keeper?

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Walker EVANS, Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1836

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Walker EVANS, Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1836

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EVANS, Laura Minnie Lee Tengle, Hale County, Alabama, Summer 1936

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EVANS, Floyd Burroughs’s bedroom, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

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Evans, Washroom and dining area of Floyd Burrough’s home, Hale County, Alabama, 1936