Social Science, Social

Change, and the

Camera
Chapter Nine - Group 7

The Origins of Documentary

In the 1930s many photographers were profoundly determined to
respond to the social and political realities that came with the Great
Depression.
Documentary photography emerged as a means for writers, filmmakers,
and photographers to produce a blend of Modernistic style and realistic
subject matter to educate the public about experiences of hardship and
injustice.
In efforts to relate to the general public, documentary photographers
strove to present the image of ordinary people who were temporarily
down on their luck.
Photographers such as John Thomson and Jacob Riis presented their
work into categories, such as occupation, class status or ethnic origin.

Filmmaking and film theory - Man with a

Movie
Camera
Filmmaking
and film theory helped
instigate the beginnings of
documentary photography.
Cinematographer Dziga Vertov,
known for his film Man with a
Movie Camera, left his studio and
roamed the streets recording life
as it was lived.
He employed unusual camera
angles, superimpositions, and
rapidly montaged scenes.

In the 1920s, documentary film

combined derring do with exotic stories,
as in Grass, an account of hazardous
yearly migration of the Bakhtari people
of Iran.
It was shot by Merian C. Cooper and
Ernest B. Schodsach, who went on to
make King Kong, a film whose early
island scenes demonstrate the
entertaining qualities of early
documentary.

Robert Flaherty (1884-1951)

American Filmmaker Robert Flaherty
spent sixteen months with
indigenous people near Hudson Bay,
Canada. chronicling their daily lives
with the film Nanook of the North
His public success helped legitimize
the documentary mode, and sent
the big studios in search of the next
big documentary.

Documentary and Sociology

The First use of the word documentary was
made influential by filmmaker and theorist John
Grierson, in his review of Flahertys film Moana,
released shortly after Nanook of the North.
Grierson suggested that documentary should be
given the power of poetry and prophecy. He
maintained that documentary was an antiaesthetic movement that knew how to use
aesthetics.
Photographer Ansel Adams rejected the new fusion
of art and observation, complaining that What
youve got are not photographers. Theyre a bunch
of sociologists with cameras.

The Farm Security Administration

Initiated in 1935, the Resettlement Association was among President
Roosevelts efforts to fight the Depression. Later becoming The Farm
Security administration in 1937.
It was an umbrella agency, charged with coordinating the various rural
relief efforts in government departments. The agency oversaw loans,
flood control, migrant camps, and agricultural education.
Its most prominent initiative was to move distressed farmers into more
economically viable service and industrial work.
Roy Stryker supervised the photography activity of the F.S.A, which
officially became known as the Historical Section - Photographic

Strykers job was to gather photographic evidence

of the agencys food works and transmit these
images to the press.
By 1940 the agency was distributing an average of
1,400 images a month. They reached out to large
media outlets such as Time magazine and Junior
Scholastic.
Strykers idea of focusing on life in small towns may
have come from the conversation he had with
sociologist Robert S. Lynd, who with Helen Lynd
wrote the influential 1929 book Middletown: A
Study in Modern America, which was an in depth
study of an average middle American small city.
In addition to Stryker, there were roughly twenty
other photographers, full-time and part-time which
shot for the agency. Among them was Walker Evans,
he was a well established photographer with a long
list of credentials. He viewed commercialism as not
only a personal dilemma, but Americas national
predicament.

Walker Evans
Evans secured a leave of absence from the R.A. to work for
Fortune magazine. Like other publications in the mid
1930s, Fortune contrived human-interest photo-essays on
how the Depression affected individuals.
Evans image of twenty-seven-year old Allie Mae
Burroughs exemplified his approach to picture-making. His
images tended to lift poverty and the economic effects of
the Depression into a timeless picturesque universe.
He was known as a legendary bad boy of F.S.A
photography by steering away from the assignment
guidelines. He was dismissed of his position in 1937
because of it.
After the F.S.A Evans continued his artful documentary. He
shot subway photographs taken with a concealed camera.
But his main income was a writer and photographer for
Fortune Magazine.

Migrant Mother - Dorothea

Lange
Dorothea Lange was also a photographer
for the R.A. During the early Depression,
she photographed and focused her
attention on migrant farm workers.
Migrant Mother is one of several shots
Lange took of a thirty-two-year-old
woman and her children. They were
stranded in a frozen pea field among the
crop they had hoped to pick to earn
some money.
It became a national icon in the
Depression era. The image was
repeatedly sent out to newspapers and
magazines by the Farm Security
Administration.

Worker Photography
In Europe and Russia during 1920s worker photographers organized to combat what they
identified bourgeois picture-lies about working conditions and attempts to organize
protest movements.
Photography groups aimed to raise consciousness through picture taking. Willi
Munzenberg, the German publisher, issued Der Arbeiter-Fotograph (The WorkerPhotographer). Camera-carrying workers captured protest rallies and strike action. They
photographed workers families, but were rarely successful in infiltrating factories to
make images of hazardous conditions. Artist such as Grosz and Kollwitz were criticized
for making the conditions of workers seem too hopeless.
Mass-Observation, or M-O; a group that simultaneously targeted false mass-media images
of workers, published May the Twelfth, containing written accounts of a day in the life
of over two hundred observers. The groups hope was to undermine the faith in
government. Humphrey Spencer, a photographer for M-O, traveled to gritty towns of
Englands northern industrial areas taking photos which were not published because of
expense involved.

Worker
Photography

The Workers Film and Photo

League was not a workingclass organization but a
group committed to
depicting urban life,
especially in poorer
neighborhoods. Members
included W. Eugene Smith
and Jerome Liebling. Due to
a 7 year FBI investigation it
finally disbanded after its
listing as a subversive
communist front
organization.
The Harlem Document was
essentially more upbeat and
was being informally created
by other image-makers such
as James Van der Zee.

James Van der Zee was steeped in nineteenth- and early twentieth
century devices, using elaborate props and backgrounds. As his
photographs of middle-class African-American life often suggest that
the postwar mass movements of blacks from the South to take
factory jobs was a success.
Twin brothers, Marvin and Morgan Smith, ran a popular Harlem
portrait studio. They recorded social affairs, political events, and
captured the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in their
pictured of the campaign Dont Buy Where You Cant Work.

Popular Science/Popular Art

At the 1937 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Beaumont Newhall,
presented samples of photojournalism, sports photography, film
stills, aerial photography, and included scientific photography.
Moholy-Nagy, a theorist, encouraged people to look at X-rays, which
were also in Newhalls show. Moholys ideas influenced an exhibit
called Film and Foto in 1929. The exhibit was separated into 3
sections: documentation; research in photographic process; and
expansion of the senses.
In late 1940s a visual recording system called, Projection
photography began with Bernice Abbotts experimenting with
scientific photography and the need to invent.

Roman Vishniac, a russian physician,

microbiologist, and historian, added
photomicrography to his skills. With
this he revealed hidden beauty in
organisms by a microscope. Some
would argue that it was Harold
Edgerton who was closely associated
with this.
The Museum of Modern Art exhibited
Edgerton's photo of the the drop of
milk splashing into a saucer.
Throughout the 1930s he perfected
strobe lighting and began working
working with military, creating
lighting for night-time aerial
photography.

George Hurrell, a chief photographer at

MGM, shaped faces with light and
shadows and Hollywood film stars
were emphasized by him through
this. These photo-entertainments
gave people relief from the Great
Depression. Men would belittle this
movement by posing as mannish
suffragettes in a comical manner.
The photobooth was introduced around
this time and also served as a
distraction from daily life. The
process was 10 minutes and was a
strip of eight images.

War and Photography In WW2

As the Nazi Party rose to power in the 1930s they seized control over Germany and Berlins Ministry of
Propaganda. They created portraits that heroized Hitler as a popular and powerful leader. Heinrich
Hoffmann was a favorite photographer of Hitlers who was able to portray him as a simple man of the
people.

The Nazis created

sloppy and
degrading photos of
the Jewish people to
bring down their
image.
Roman Vishniac
worked with a
concealed camera
picturing Jewish
life. He came to
America and went
on to practice
photomicrography.

By the late 1930s,

Goebbels decided that
journalists and
photographers had to
work for the
Propaganda Division
of the German army.
Media people made
fun of Goebbels
schemes by producing
photomontages, a
composite of two or
more photographs in
one image.

John Heartfield used photography to satirize the growing Nazi power.

He did not make his own photographs, but commissioned other
photographers in order to reveal the horrible truths about the Nazis
plans.

War In The Pacific

Photographs of the Japanese attack on the American fleet in Pearl
Harbor showed Americans the brutality of the Japanese military power.

Death of a Loyalist
Soldier was taken by
Robert Capa. This
photo started
worldwide debate
claiming that the
image was staged.

Hatred toward the Japanese people built as photographers captured

images of the horrors of war.
Newspapers and magazines, especially Life and Time Magazine,
stressed the personal encounter with war.
W. Eugene Smith managed to get so close to the action that he was
actually wounded by Japanese fire. He developed the photo-essay
into a sophisticated form. His pictures centered on emotional
experiences of both soldiers and nurses.

The Museum of Modern Art exhibited war photographs to raise money

for the war effort. Cpt. Edward Steichen (American) created two
shows for the museum. His photographs accounted for about 85 per
cent of the Allied information about the enemies maneuvers.
Steichens exhibits, designed by Herbert Bayer, used shaped-space
concepts which he had once used to promote the Nazi party.
Henri Cartier-Bresson escaped German imprisonment and started
photographing scenes of the war to be used in a documentary.
Photographers in concentration camps recorded grim scenes of
charred remains of extermination victims.

Steichens Road to Victory exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art

showed WWII photos and was immensely popular with the public.

Victims of the Holocaust

Margaret Bourke-White was one of very few female war
photographers. Her photographs of Buchenwald showed the horrors
of extermination camps

Joe Rosenthal took

one of the most
famous war
photographs of all time
called Marines Raising
the American flag on
Iwo Jima.

Alfred
Eisenstaedt took
this famous
picture in Times
Square after the
war had ended.
It is called The
Kiss.