With basic knowledge of the fundamentals of photography the class will turn its attention to the photographs themselves. We will spend the next two weeks looking at pictures by photographers who worked to show us the world and to effect change. We will study five photographers who made a significant impact on the world through their exploration of social conditions. Although there are so many great, even extraordinary, photographers, for the purposes of this unit I will concentrate on those who made their mark on photojournalism.
We will explore the plight of the poor, and the horrors of child labor, and the
construction of The Empire State building through the work of Lewis Hine. Dorothea Lange will take us on a journey to see the hardship of the migrant workers during the Depression. Through observing the work of Margaret Bourke-White we will pay homage to the first person and the first woman to do the first cover for
Life
. Through
her bravery we will better understand the horrors of Buchenwald, the wonder of Gandhi,
and the glory of the Chrysler building. Gordon Parks, the first African American
photographer hired by
Life
will show us the sadness of racism in the 1950's and 60's with such photos as
American Gothic
and
Norman Jr. reading in bed
, as well as the rising sense of black power with portraits of both Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali.
The unit will end with a more contemporary photographer, Bruce Davidson, who photographed East Harlem, Central Park, and Brooklyn gangs, thereby reflecting back the beauty of teenagers and the city amidst the squalor and stereotypes. In addition to seeing these photographs students will read about the photographers' lives including what influenced them, how they grew up, and how they became interested in the subjects they chose.
I intend to take my students to a comfortable place, outside our classroom, where we can really look at a photograph. We have one room in my school that we can darken, that has a good screen, to create a hushed, almost reverent space. In this room we will be able to really see these powerful photographs enlarged on a screen and spend quiet time just looking. During this time I will have a set of questions ready for each photo. For example when we look at the famous photograph by Dorothea Lange of the woman and child taken during the depression
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936,
I will ask them how old they think she is and what little details in the photo tell part of her story. We will also visit the Yale Art Gallery and take a trip to New York to the Museum of Modern Art to see some of the original photographs.
We will transition from looking at photographs to becoming photographers. The way I intend to do this is to show the documentary
Born Into Brothels
, a film which won the Academy Award for Best documentary in 2005. It is about a photojournalist, Zana Briski, who went to India to photograph the women who work as prostitutes in the red-light district of Calcutta. She soon discovered, however, that because they were too afraid of repercussions they would not allow their photograph to be taken. Instead, she got permission to take pictures of their kids.
Most of the kids she worked with were between the ages of 10 and 12. The caste system in India prevents these kids from going to school or in any way escaping their fate, because their mothers were prostitutes, which is illegal. The children are not allowed to go to school, therefore doomed to a life of poverty and, at least for the girls, a future as a prostitute.
Briski decided to reach them by connecting them to a larger world view through photography. She gave each kid, ten in all, a camera and told them to photograph whatever they wanted. She showed them how to use the camera and let them go. What
they came back with was so haunting and so real that they make the viewer want to stand up and do something about this problem in a far off country.
My favorite one is of a young kid smiling for the first time in the documentary when he was taken to the beach and allowed to go in the water. Their photos were eventually
shown in art galleries throughout the world and are for sale online at www.Kids-with-cameras. Org/Born Into Brothels, using the proceeds as a way to continue to support these kids.
I showed this in my documentary film class last year and of all the ones we watched, this was their favorite. It was the first time they understood the power of photography and that everyone, including them, can make a difference. All is not hopeless. Students will begin to connect photojournalism with problems in their own communities.
Before they viewed this film last year I asked the class if there was anything they felt they could do individually to change some of the problems they face and see everyday, and they all said, "No." The problems they talked about included inadequate housing, the homeless, single mothers without resources, teenage pregnancy, abandoned buildings, the way the police treat them, gangs, violence, their relationship to Yale, and either the horror or happiness of their family life.
Each student will receive a camera and go into their communities and take pictures. They will choose a photographer we studied and try to match the style, while they develop their own style. Picasso said that all the best artists steal from each other.
At the end of this unit each student will have a body of work. Each will make a coffee table book of their work that will include their photographs, their interpretation of them and a biography of the photographer whose style they chose to emulate. These will be on display in the school library.
Lewis Hine -- The Social Worker with a Camera
One of my objectives with this unit is to get students to bring the social conditions around them to light. Lewis Hine, known as the social worker with a camera, is an excellent photographer with whom to start. Hine, known primarily for his work to change child labor laws, was born in 1874 in Wisconsin. His father, who was a veteran of the Civil War, died in an accident in 1892 and from that point on Hine was responsible for his family's financial welfare. One of the jobs he had to do to help maintain his family was work in an upholstery factory for 13 hours a day, six days a week. His first-hand experience with the rigors and exploitation of children led to his life long crusade against child labor.
Hine was able to escape his fate when asked to become the photographer for the Ethical Culture Society. His job there was to photograph the social and academic parts of the school. He soon learned that photography has power and that it could be used as a way to reveal the truth about society's flaws.
In 1908 The National Child Labor Committee, an agency devoted to changing child welfare, asked him to work as their photographer. He had a monthly salary and for the next few years he traveled from the Northeast to the South, photographing children at work. He photographed them in mines, factories, textile mills. One of the most famous of these photographs is
Ten Year Old spinner in a North Carolina cotton mill (www.digital gallery.nypl.org),
In this photo we see a young girl, perhaps 10, possibly younger, standing in a factory between two rows of textile machines. Clearly she has been asked to pose as she is looking directly at the camera. The light through the large factory window reflects off the ceiling making the rest of the photo appear dingy and dirty. She is dwarfed by these looming machines, making one wonder how she can still stand up after the enormous effort it must have taken her to work the line. Is she responsible for both sides, I wonder? Does she know that she is working too hard for a child? She seems complacent, though, as her hands are down by her side, almost in a rigid manner, and has accepted her fate, not knowing there are any other choices for her.
Hine often had to disguise himself to get inside the factory and take photographs that exposed the harshness inside. He took on the identity of a Bible salesman, a postcard salesman and an industrial photographer whose job was to make a record of the machinery. He certainly would not have been allowed access if the shop owners knew that he was specifically taking these pictures in order to stop child labor abuse.
Another photo taken in 1911,
Children at Washington cotton Mills, Fries,
Virginia (
www.vahistorical.org/exhibits/hine) has been taken by Hine with permission from the owner. It is a group of children, about 20-30 kids, mostly boys, posing for the camera. They are huddled together, the girls wearing skirts and the boys wearing pants, and most of them have their arms crossed in front. They are neither smiling nor frowning. One gets a sense of acceptance and resignation. In the background is a large industrial building they had left for the photo. Hine's caption at the bottom of the photo reads "some of the youngsters working in the spinning rooms of the Washington Cotton Mills, Fries, Virginia were posed by the overseer, who said, 'these boys are a bad lot.' When questioned, they all said they were fourteen yrs. Old or more." From this comment by the overseer, an interesting choice of wording by Hine, we can assume the owner is proud of how many workers he has. Also we can assume he has no guilt because they are a "bad" lot and nothing else could be done with them except to put them to work.
Factory owners and other people complained that they were tired of these dreary pictures. Hine responded to this criticism by saying," Perhaps you are weary of child labor pictures. Well, so are the rest of us, but we propose to make you and the whole country so sick and tired of the whole business that when the time for action comes, child labor pictures will be records of the past." He was soon proved successful in his actions as Americans did come to believe that limits should be set. Congress passed laws in 1916 but the Supreme Court declared them unconstitional because they "denied children the freedom to contract work."
It wasn't until 1924 that Congress was able to pass a national child labor law. However, history tells us that child labor only really began to disappear because of the great depression when adults found themselves needing to take these jobs. It wasn't until FDR signed the Fair Labor standards act in 1938, which set minimum hours and wages and placed serious limitations on child labor. Children under 16 were then prohibited from working in so-called dangerous jobs such as mining. Even though it took years for child labor laws to change, it is largely because of Hine that the problem came into view; this forced the federal government to do something about it. Hine went on to take many more photos of children at work and later a book of his work
Kids At Work
by Russell Freedman, was published. Hine went on to work for the Red Cross exposing the harsh conditions in tenements, the working conditions for women, and the plight of the Pittsburg miners.
One of his most famous commissions was his last one. He was asked to be the official photographer of the construction of the Empire State Building. Knowing what we know of Hine, he seems an unlikely choice as the person to document the construction of what would become "the tallest building in the world." Again Hine took many risks taking these pictures. He hung from rafters 100 stories high to get aerial views so that the viewer could see the risk involved for the workers and the sheer vastness of this undertaking.
Hine's most striking work from this 1931 collection, is
Icarus Atop Empire State Building, (
Freedman,
Kids at Work
, p.82). This photograph shows a worker dressed in overalls, no shirt, climbing a cable wire, without a harness, working his way to the top of the building to do some more work. Below him is the rest of the city, which looks like little small houses, the way houses look when we fly. That gives us an idea of just how high up this man is. It also gives us the impression of how brave and hard-working he was and in that way shows the nobility of work, a direct departure for Hine. He began his career showing the degradation of work and ended it by showing the working class as heroes. The title is intriguing. It implies that perhaps man is flying a little too close to the sun, showing Hine's ambiguity about the Empire State Building. It is interesting to note that Hine was able to see both the sadness and the wonder of the world. Hine received a great deal of positive attention for this project but like everyone else during the Depression he had a hard time supporting himself. He apparently died destitute and on relief in 1940.