This Is America - Documentary Photography of the 1930s and 1940s
2 October 2004 - 2 January 2005
The Lowry continues its commitment to exhibiting photography with this major exhibition of over 200 historic – as well as little known - images from Depression America.
The 1930s and 40s were decades in which interest was taken in the previously ‘hidden’ landscapes of poverty. LS Lowry‘s paintings of this period demonstrate the same impulse, and This is America complements the exhibition, Lowry’s Mean Streets of the 1930s and 40s.
The images in This is America are by eight photographers, all but one of whom worked on Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal "Farm Security Administration" (FSA) project. Some of the images displayed are world famous, others less well known, and the combined effect will give a new and deeper insight into the physical and human landscape of the Great Depression.
The exhibition starts with works by Dorothea Lange (1895-1965).
Originally a fashionable portrait photographer, during the Depression Lange started photographing the poor and unemployed who were on the streets outside her studio. A number of works from her "Migrant Mother" series are shown together to show how the final work - arguably the best known photograph ever taken - was constructed using her studio portraiture techniques.
Ben Shahn (1899-1969) photographed broadly similar themes to Dorothea Lange, but his work is less formally controlled.
Originally trained as a painter, Shaihn also used an angled camera to "snatch" images of people who were often unaware they were being photographed.
A series of works from Walker Evans' (1903-75) book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" will show how Evans emphasised that dignity and pride can still flourish in conditions of great poverty.
In contrast will be pictures by the only photographer in the exhibition who was not employed by the FSA project, Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71), in particular from her book "You Have Seen Their Faces". In these images the despair of poverty is much more in evidence than its dignity. Arthur Rothstein (1915-85), who has been called "the Ansel Adams of erosion", shows how using inappropriate farming methods turned fertile land into desert. His works were carefully constructed - for example, he moved a skull to give a more dramatic shadow in "The bleached skull of a steer on the dry sun-baked sand of the South Dakota Badlands". His photographs of closed down banks in the Mid West can be said to summarise the Depression in a single image. Evicted sharecroppers and protesters along Route 61 bring the underlying conflict to life.
The imagery of conflict continues with Marion Post Wolcott's (1910-90) works. These include photographs of picket lines waiting for strike- breaking workers. Her work also shows how globalisation was already increasing in power - her images of the manufactured Pepsi-Cola logo contrasting with the hand-painted strikers' banners, her theme being the loss of the rural American idyll to big business.
The titles often sum up the power of the work - for example "Houses which have been condemned by the Board of Health but are still occupied by Negro migratory workers, Belle Glade, Florida".
Russell Lee (1903-86) created images that show the plight and dignity of black families, including slum conditions in which they lived. In one image what at first appears to be a bombed out street turns out to be "merely" an image of abject urban poverty. Included in the selections of Marion Post Wolcott and Russell Lee will be colour photographs – overturning our view of this as a ‘black and white’ era.
The exhibition ends with works by Gordon Parks (born 1912), the only black photographer who worked on the FSA project. His works follow a day in the life story of one person. The biographical portrait is of Ella Watson, a government cleaner bringing up 5 children on an income of $1080 per year. Normally the images would be of the people whose offices she cleaned - the government officials and men of power. This series brings the normally invisible Ella to life, and shows that her work is as valid and important as that of the unseen officials whose offices she cleans. The image of her posed with her mop and broom in a government office next to a US flag is one of the more iconic in the exhibition.
Mark Durden, guest curator of This is America for The Lowry, commented: "This show will present a distinctive selection of important documentary photographic images made during Franklin D Roosevelt's "New Deal". Including both canonical and lesser-known photos, the exhibition places emphasis on the social dynamics behind the documentary practices of eight photographers. This is America will also include lesser-known colour photographs, which radically disrupt our view of this period in American history, which tends to be linked to black & white images."
Lindsay Brooks, Head of Galleries at The Lowry, added: "What will be fascinating about this exhibition is the emphasis it places on giving status to "ordinary" people. “
Posted on Friday, 01 October 2004 under Press Galleries Press