the great depression
The Great Depression ushered America into an era of social consciousness and liberal reform. In the decade of the 1930's, under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, writers, artists, photographers, musicians, and performers were marshaled to create works which documented American life, sponsored by government programs such as the F.S.A. (Farm Security Administration) or the W.P.A. (Work Projects Administration). The Great Depression, in itself, had been a rude awakening from the escapism of the Roaring Twenties, so it was not surprising that realism would become the preferred style for creative artists. And what more realistic genre than the photograph? The 1930's and 1940's saw a golden age in photojournalism in America in which photographers such as Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White created visual corollaries to the writings of Erskine Caldwell (TOBACCO ROAD), John Steinbeck (THE GRAPES OF WRATH), and Archibald MacLeish (LAND OF THE FREE). Another highly respected photographer who had already been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York before he joined the F.S.A. was Walker Evans, whose master images have been preserved in two published volumes. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, November 3, 1903,
The pictures and messages of Walker Evans were a proverbial rooster for somebody to rise up and take charge and clean up the ruins of the depression. His pictures were in a way a reminder of what was happening at the time and perhaps contributed to the spirit of the people not to give up. Walker Evans graduated from the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and studied at both Williams College and the Sorbonne before he began taking photographs in New York City. He was a documentary photography pioneer whose portraits of "the common man" have earned him comparisons to another American artist, Walt Whitman. The whole series had a variety of pictures, one has the sensation of passing from the safe, orderly rituals of art into the terrifying radiance of the real world. His collar is turned rather self-consciously, dashingly, it might seem in a different context, revealing at once a glimpse of the handsome farmer's bare shoulder, and a ring of grime within the collar. Every farmer could connect with every one of his tenant farmer pictures, it was one of those moments of deja vu, "that's my situation", it was as if he had hit the nail on the head. Whatever was left of Evans's defenses by 1936 has been stripped away by the exigencies of the Great Depression. Only grandmother is shod, in ruined brogans. But even so, the heroic young man, brave defender of the vulnerable Allie Mae, looks fit to star in a John Ford western. Then we see the disturbing picture of a shallow grave, its wooden markers casting long shadows in light that emphasizes the texture of the friable earth. " Evans himself possessed a contagious dignity, and no doubt he made the most of what they had. They wanted to hear that there is a window of opportunity. Even his job as an information specialist with Rexford Tugwell's Resettlement Administration, an important agency in FDR's New Deal, was more a matter of opportunism than political idealism. Rather than seeing the Crash of 1929 as a indication of suffering, Evans and his useless downtown comrades cheered at the news that businessmen were throwing themselves out of windows, seeing in such tragedy confirmation that the business world was fundamentally corrupt.
Common topics in this essay:
Katy Tingle,
Walker Evans,
John Ford,
Mae Burroughs,
Allie Mae's,
Administration RA,
Walt Whitman,
Burroughs Asleep,
Spanish American,
Roaring Twenties,
walker evans,
allie mae,
resettlement administration,
tenant farmer,
katy tingle,
mouth eyes,
bare feet,
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Acceptance Essays
