Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71) was a pioneering figure in 20th century documentary photography and is famous for her scenes of modern industry, of the Great Depression, and of political and social movements in the 1920s through 1950s. Born in New York in 1904, Bourke-White attended Columbia University to study under renowned photographer, Clarence White. In 1927 she moved to Cleveland, the heartland of American industry, and opened her own studio. There she documented the effects of modern industry on the land and people. In 1929, Bourke-White became the first staff photographer employed by Fortune magazine. In keeping with her groundbreaking work in the United States, Bourke-White obtained permission in 1930 to enter the Soviet Union to document industrialization under the Communist regime. Upon her return in 1931, she compiled these photographs into a book entitled Eyes of Russia. When Bourke-White returned to the United States she developed a
greater sympathy for the suffering of the American worker. By 1935 she
was using a more candid style of photography, sequentially ordering her
photographs to create visual narratives. Bourke-White started using this new approach
in photography for Fortune Magazine in 1934 as she set off to
document the effects of the intense drought of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma
and other Great Plains states. She created a photographic essay of the
migration from this region at the height of the Great Depression and in
1936 published these images in a volume entitled You Have Seen Their Faces. (bio from The Philips Collection)
Dorothea Lange (1895-65) was an American photographer. From 1917 to 1918 she attended a photography course run
by Clarence H. White at Columbia University, NY. Lange moved to San
Francisco in 1918, and in 1919 she set up a successful portrait studio
where she took works such as Clayburgh Children, San Francisco
(1924; Oakland, CA, Mus.). In the late 1920s she became dissatisfied
with studio work and experimented with landscape and plant photography,
although she found the results unsatisfactory. With the Stock Market
crash of 1929 Lange decided to look for subjects outside her studio.
Turning to the effects of the economic decline she took photographs such
as General Strike, San Francisco (1934; Oakland, CA, Mus.). She
had her first one-woman show at the Brockhurst Studio of Willard Van
Dyke in Oakland, CA (1934), and in the same year met the economist Paul
Schuster Taylor, under whom she worked for the California State
Emergency Relief Administration in 1935. Later that year she transferred
to the Resettlement Administration, set up to deal with the problem of
the migration of agricultural workers. She continued to work for this
body, through its various transformations (including its time as the
Farm Security Administration), until 1942. One of her most famous
photographs from this project is Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California
(1936; Washington, DC, Lib. Congr.), which depicts an anxious,
distracted mother and three children. In 1939, in collaboration with
Taylor, who provided the text, she published An American Exodus,
which dealt with the same social problems. (from her MOMA biography)
Photographs by Margaret Bourke-White
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| Margaret Bourke-White, Bernice Daunora, 31, a member of a steel mill's 'top gang' must wear a 'one-hour,lightweight breathing apparatus' as protection against gas escaping from blast furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943. |
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| Margaret Bourke-White, Theresa Arana, 21, takes down temperature recordings at draw furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943. |
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| Margaret Bourke-White, During the Great Ohio River Flood of 1937, men and women in Louisville, Kentucky, line up seeking food and clothing from a relief station, in front of a billboard proclaiming, 'World's Highest Standard of Living.' |
Photographs by Dorothea Lange
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| Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) |
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| Dorothea Lange, Woman of the High Plains, Texas Panhandle (1938) |
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Dorothea Lange, Kern County, California (1938)
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| Walker Evans, Sharecropper's Family, Hale County Alabama (1936) |
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| Walker Evans, Floyd Burroughs' Work Shoes (1936) |
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| Walker Evans, A Child's Grave (1936) |
Study Questions:
Begin by looking carefully at all the photographs from the day. Allow yourself to really look at them carefully without rushing through them. When studying these images consider the following:
- What are you looking at?
- How are the images composed? How are the objects in the image arranged both in relation to each other and to the frame of the photograph?
- Where is the camera placed in relationship to the subject of the photograph? What relationship does this produce between the viewer and the subject?
- How do the photographers use light and shadow to create texture and meaning in the image?
- How does the title of the piece inform what you see in the image?
2. What is the relationship of the viewer to the subjects in the Dorothea Lange images? How are they similar, how are they different? As for the the Kern County, California image what is the relationship between text and image? What visual pun is Lange making?
3. Two of the Evans photographs presented here are of objects. What are viewers meant to infer from these objects? What sort of access does it offer us to the owners of these objects? How is this different than the image of the sharecropper family?
PAPER 1 DUE
