This source commentary deals with the methodological, interpretive and theoretical issues raised by using documentary photographs as historical sources. The problems and advantages connected with this type of historical source are going to be illustrated taking documentary photographs created for the photographic section of the US American federal government during the interwar period as an example. By focusing on two out of the approximately 80, 000 photos of this collection which were produced by the two most renown photographers working for the project, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, this source commentary is going to argue that using them profitably as sources in writing cultural history, requires at least as much or even more critical consideration and background information than is required by other sources.
At a glance
- Grade: 1.0 (1.0 is the best grade)
- Analyses Lange’s Migrant Mother and Evans’s photograph of Floyd Burrough’s Alabama home
- Applies Roland Barthes’s concepts of denotation, connotation, and myth to documentary photography
Contents
Purpose and Key Themes
This source commentary examines the methodological, interpretive, and theoretical challenges of using documentary photographs as historical sources. Through photographs made for the U.S. government during the Great Depression, it asks how historians can critically interpret images shaped by photographers, government policy, and the contexts in which they were presented.
- The apparent objectivity of photographic images
- Denotative and connotative meanings, including Roland Barthes’s concept of myth
- The influence of photographers’ backgrounds and government instructions
- Documentary photography and New Deal propaganda
- Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and Walker Evans’s photographs
- The historical context and reception of images
Excerpt from the Book
Reading Walker Evans’s Photograph of the Burrough Home
The foreground of this image by Walker Evans shows a wooden-panelled wall, a simple washstand comprising of a small bowl standing on a wooden shelf and a dishcloth hanging on a nail on the right side of the doorframe. The background of the picture, that can be seen trough the doorframe, shows the interior of a room. The floor and the walls in this room consist of wood-panels. There is a table close to the doorframe. It is covered with a tablecloth and an oil lamp is standing on top of it. In the corner of this room is a wooden cupboard with a huge crockery vessel placed on it. Parts of a wooden chair, that is situated between the cupboard and the table, are visible. Light is falling into the room from the right hand side. Just as in the case of Dorothea Lange´s image, this photograph gives little information itself. The title gives the information that it shows the washstand and the kitchen of Floyd Burrough´s home in Hale County, Alabama and that it was taken during the summer of 1936.
The context in which this photograph was taken is well documented because Evans took it as part of a series of photographs that were intended to precede the text of James Agee´s documentary book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). In this book Agee´s text and Evans´s images document the life of three southern sharecropper families. Due to the many discrepancies between Agee´s text and Evans´s photographs, it was proven that Evans had carefully rearranged the rooms of the Burrough household before photographing them. In the case of this photograph, Evans had amongst other things removed the dishes and the cutlery that were usually to be found on the table, moved the table itself, taken away a bench and added the crockery vessel that he placed on the cupboard.
On the one hand this was done because Evans´s approach to documenting the life of these poor people was highly influenced by the high artistic demands that he placed on his photography and on the other hand because he sought to show to his contemporaries that despites their poverty the sharecroppers were not helpless but instead able to create a world of order. To be able to keep order even in the face of hard times was a contemporary value that was considered to be an important prerequisite to get through them. The following statement of Mrs. Burrough that was recorded by James Agee confirms that the ennoblement of the sharecroppers was just as fictive as the dignity that is expressed in the face of the migrant mother
Oh, I do hate this house so bad! Seems like they ain´t nothing in the whole world I can do to make it pretty.
Chapter Summaries
Source commentary (no chapter headings appear in the document): The paper considers how photographic objectivity, context, authorship, and audience affect the interpretation of documentary images. It explores the FSA work of Lange and Evans, including Migrant Mother and a photograph of the Burrough home.
Keywords
documentary photography, cultural history, historical sources, FSA, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Great Depression, New Deal, propaganda, objectivity, denotation, connotation, Roland Barthes, Migrant Mother, sharecropping
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this work about?
It examines the use of documentary photographs as historical sources, focusing on images made for the U.S. government during the Great Depression.
What are its central themes?
The central themes include photographic objectivity, interpretation and context, government influence, propaganda, and the emotional impact of images.
What is the main research question?
The commentary asks why documentary photographs require critical interpretation and historical background, and how they can be used in cultural history.
What method does the author use?
The author provides a source commentary, interpreting two photographs in relation to their production, historical context, visual content, and reception.
What does the main discussion cover?
It discusses FSA photography, government aims and constraints, and close readings of Lange’s Migrant Mother and Evans’s photograph of the Burrough home.
Which keywords characterize the work?
Documentary photography, FSA, Great Depression, New Deal, propaganda, objectivity, cultural history, and historical sources are central terms.
Why does the work treat photographs as more than objective records?
It explains that photographs can be staged or shaped by the photographer, government instructions, and the circumstances of their circulation.
How does the commentary interpret Evans’s photograph?
It describes changes Evans made to the Burrough household’s interior and considers how the rearrangement shaped the image’s presentation of sharecropper life.
What does the discussion of Migrant Mother examine?
It considers the image’s limited visible information, its historical context, and the choices involved in composing and presenting the photograph.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Stefanie Däne (Autor:in), 2007, Source based project: “FSA Photography: Dorothea Lange &Walker Evans”, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/154189
