Ben Shahn Social Realism

A growth in political movements, attempts at social reform and strikes by the population trying to establish a sense of identity contributed to the turmoil that overwhelmed the United States during the Great Depression (1929-1938). Many artists who were infuriated by the events became social activists through their art.
Among them, was Ben Shahn (1898-1969), an artist whose Jewish family fled Lithuania in 1906 and settled in Brooklyn, N.Y. In the 1920’s, Shahn became part of the social realism movement. Social realism is used to describe the works of american artist who were committed to present the social trouble of the suffering lower class, labor strikes, and poverty during this time. In the 1930’s, he stopped painting and started working …show more content…
He took photographs of marches against social injustice in Union Square and City Hall. You could see, in the faces of the people in the crowd, how frustrated, angry, and tired they were of the crisis that they were going through. They had about enough of the government’s abuse. Shahn also photographed inmates and prison officials at the New York City Reformatory and Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary. This images show how they had to stand outside for hours with nothing to do and when they returned to their cells they had to bring their stools with them. The rooms or cells were overcrowded, the officials had sticks to whip the inmates if needed. It was just unacceptable and I think that is what he wanted to show the …show more content…
I think his intent was to have a relationship with the viewer and to some degree inspire change. As he once said, “If we are to have values, a spiritual life and a culture, these things must find the imagery and interpretations through the arts.” All of the photographs he took were driven with the goal of addressing issues such as the explosion of mass media, unemployment, the growth of labor unions, the politicization of artists on the left, racial segregation, and the conflict between the traditional values and modernity in America. Shahn’s examples differ from those of modernist Alfred Stieglitz in the 1930’s, who promoted the aesthetics purity, preciousness, and uniqueness of individual prints over his media reproducible images. I think Shahn’s generation was leaned in more towards expanding “artful” documentary photography into the public’s view through tabloids and book reproduction. Interestingly, by the mid 1940’s his photography was more intimate for him and became known as personal realism. At this point, he decided to stop taking pictures and he went back to painting portraits by using his photographs as his muse. Ben Shahn really believed that art was one way to express yourself. He stood up for what was right his entire life through his art. He also believed in hope and in humanity, that people can change with time and it was up to the people to help each