dust

The Depression-era photographer, Arthur Rothstein, spent part of 1936 recording dust storms and their after-effects for the Farm Services Administration. His photos can now be found in the Prints and Photos Division of the Library of Congress. Here's a sampling of them. Click to view full size. All captions are by LC staff from information supplied with the negatives.

First the dust itself:

{Heavy black clouds of dust rising over the Texas Panhandle, Texas, 1936 Mar.}

{Heavy black clouds of dust rising over the Texas Panhandle, Texas, 1936 Mar.}

{Dust storm. Note heavy metal signs blown out by wind. Amarillo, Texas, 1936 Apr.}

{Dust storm. Amarillo, Texas, 1936 Apr.}

Here are photos of the people, their dwellings, and the environment in which they attempted to survive.

{Dust is too much for this farmer's son in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Apr.}

{Son of farmer in dust bowl area. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Apr.}

{Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Apr.*}

{Mike Sullinger, who has a farm near Carson, North Dakota, looking for rain, 1936 July.**}

{Typical farm in drought area. Beach, North Dakota, 1936 July.}

{Overgrazed land. Pennington County, South Dakota, 1936 May.***}

{Grasshoppers have destroyed this orchard on Mrs. Emma Knoll's farm in Grant County, North Dakota, 1936 July.}

{Dust bowl farmer raising fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Apr.****}

{Dugout inhabited by farmers who have abandoned their farms and moved to town. Grassy Butte, North Dakota, 1936 July.}

{Children of submarginal farmer. Pennington County, South Dakota, 1936 May.}

{House on land development project. Pennington County, North Dakota, 1936 May.}

{Sod house in which this man's father homesteaded thirty years ago. Pennington County, South Dakota, 1936 May.}

{A Kincaider who is still proving his claim with one year to go. Pennington County, South Dakota, 1936 May.*****}

{Waiting for better times, J. Huffman of Grassy Butte, North Dakota, sits in front of his closed store, 1936 July.}

{A sod homestead built in 1900. Pennington County, South Dakota. Since 1900 this sod house has been standing to mark a farmer's effort to reap wealth from the Great Plains. At the time of its construction there must have been skirmish after skirmish with the cattlemen as the fence of the homesteader narrowed down the range. Then wartime prosperity, with the price of wheat booming. Then the years of intermittent drought, up to the present, and instead of wealth, a bitter battle to achieve mere subsistence on the parched earth, 1936 May-June.}

{Vernon Evans and family of Lemmon, South Dakota, near Missoula, Montana, Highway 10. Leaving the grasshopper-ridden and drought-stricken area for a new start in Oregon and Washington. Expect to arrive at Yakima in time for hop picking. Make about two hundred miles a day in Model T Ford. Live in tent, 1936 July.}

{Farmer of Lancaster County, Nebraska, 1936 May.}

{Construction on a stock water dam. Dawes County, Nebraska, 1936 May.}

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Notes:

*This became one of the most famous images of the period. Rothstein was accused of fakery because he requested the father and sons to take the poses that you see. Such posing was ubiquitous in FSA images by virtually all its photographers and was both widely known and perfectly obvious; the photographers didn't claim otherwise. There's truly no fakery here, just the capturing of a compelling image by the discerning eye of a master photographer.

**As above, it seems irrelevant whether the photographer asked him to take this pose or he did it without prompting.

***This image became well-known when it was revealed that Rothstein had moved the skull from another place so that he could capture it in the same image with the cactus. Critics claimed that his intervention sullied the purity of the photo and invalidated the meaning that it conveys. This now seems to be an empty argument, partly for the reasons given above.

**** It was claimed that the farmer would not have used that type of shovel for post hole digging, and thus that Rothstein was again engaged in some kind of fakery. The criticism is weak (why does it matter what shovel appears?) and probably unjust as well since that was just the sort of shovel one would pick to work with light dust.

***** A Kincaider was a farmer (men who came to be known as "sod-busters") who took advantage of the Kinkaid Act of 1904 to claim a homestead in Nebraska.

phtographic integrity

Error Morris has produced the final section in his set of posts on Depression-era images by Farm Security Administration photographers: The End of the World. It's number 7 in the series The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock. In it he again interviews an expert about controversies over supposed breaches of documentary realism. He says that given the number of decisions that every photographer must make, there's hardly any image that can achieve the sort of purity that critics demand. The questions to ask of photo-journalism are, or should be, rather whether a photographer's work is accurate than whether it is entirely free of manipulation and whether it "portrays a larger reality" rather than whether it is naïvely real. A photo can be just as authentic for being posed as it can for being entirely unmediated. Perhaps — given the aesthetic content of authenticity — it can be even more so.

He says that the FSA photographers, Rothstein, Lange and Evans, "have been accused of posing their photographs, in short, of manipulating them to some end. And yet all photographs are posed. There is no such thing as pure documentary photography."

This conclusion is supported by an extended interview with their FSA boss: Oral history interview with Roy Emerson Stryker, 1963-1965 (interviews with Roy Stryker, conducted by Richard Doud at the artist's home in Montrose Colorado, 1963 October 17, 1964 June 13, and 1965 January 23). In them Stryker uses the word discernment to help us understand the role of the photographer in producing an image that is true to its subject, meaningful, and visually compelling. He says Walker Evans had a "discerning eye" and that another FSA employee, Esther Bubley, had both discernment and wonderful technique: "people saw themselves in her photos and liked what they saw." Using Bubley to explain how the FSA photographers achieved their marvelous results without deceitful manipulation, he said they possessed extreme competence in handling their cameras, they could be unobtrusive without concealing the fact that they were taking shots; they could work as collaborators with the people who appear in their photos to achieve results that were deeply satisfying.

Asked whether great photos are accidental, that is a matter of luck, Stryker says there's more to it than that:

Most great pictures are the product of -- oh, no, listen -- the accidental factor is very large, very large. And I don't want to -- please, don't misunderstand me, there are very very brilliant, able photographers who know exactly what they want to do. They have the accidental factor of being there at the right time to get it but they know what they're doing. A competent man knows what he's doing. On the other thing, you see, if you were to have the time and go through the new files, and you take them collectively and go through them, you'd come out with a fantastic exhibit. Because the old news photographer always went to the dogfight, and the dogfight was right in front of him. He pointed the camera and by God, there it was. That was an "accident." I don't want to underrate, I don't want to take anything away from that man. He had the courage to go there, he had the courage to sense it. In a certain strike picture, a bunch of guys standing with their backs to the cameraman. The windows are broken -- and they've got lead pipes and clubs in their hands and they're hidden away, all you see is their backs. It was quite a picture. The man knew what he was doing. He "happened" to get there, he saw it. I don't know the photographer, I'd like to know how well he planned in adFvance but I think he saw and he had to work fast. Cartier-Bresson is terrific. He sees so fast, and gets his camera work so fast. He's unusual. Very little is accidental. He's there. That's an accident. He had to be there at the right time -- that is the great accident factor: You're there. Now quite different from that: Walker Evans' pictures are quite different. They're not the accident, he plans them, he walks around, he looks, and all of a sudden -- his is a composed job. He takes time. Very few of his -- his are like Ben Shahn's are not. Ben Shahn [another FSA photographer] is there at the moment, he helps, perhaps, to set up some by his conversation, but he sees the faces, he sees the juxtaposition of faces; a second later it's too late. He had to hit it right. Some of that is accident, but he knows what he's after, he sees -- you see, he sees a whole concept there. Walker walks around and all of a sudden sees -- coming back to my old picture -- the tombstone in the cemetery, the street, the houses. It's an interesting picture, because you know that he planned it. That's not "composed" in the sense that that word is so badly used at times, but he hunts till he finds the right viewpoint, the right place to stand. But he's telling you a sort of social situation. And the woman wanted that picture -- she wanted it for a different purpose but she sensed the importance of the picture.

On the controversies surrounding the moving of objects before photographing them, Stryker tells the interviewer:

There's not too much to say. ... It wasn't dishonesty at all ... It was a political situation. Newspapers picked it up because we were then going over into a political controversy. Which is a perfectly legitimate, worth-while thing. Thank God that's what democracy is -- a difference of opinion. The result was, there was a stampede, everybody take up the thing and damn us for it. I don't think they even looked carefully. In the end, I think they made something more out of it; it wasn't that important.

At about the same time Stryker did his oral history, two photographers debated the work of the FSA photographers. One of them said "What the FSA photographers did, and I knew most of them, was to acquaint themselves with people and gain their confidence in order to show them as they really lived. This takes time." (source: Correspondence: John G. Morris - John Mraz, November 2002-March 2003.)

In a profile of Stryker by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh a few years back, Stryker's method is described:

Even though he did not concern himself with the mechanics of wielding a camera, Stryker developed into a great teacher who could inspire those who came to work for him. Before sending his photographers out into the field, Stryker made sure they were well-informed about their assigned area, its people, economy and even its politics. He often gave his photographers books to read and would encourage them to look at assignments in new and different ways. Stryker felt that an educated, sensitive photographer would produce images that "would mirror both his understanding and his compassion."
-- Source: The Photographers: Roy E. Stryker

To close, here are some highly-regarded Depression-era photos by FSA photographers in the Library of Congress Prints and Photos Division.

{Bud Fields and his family...Alabama. 1935 or 1936, Walker Evans}

{Floyd Burroughs...Hale County, Alabama. 1935 or 1936, Walker Evans}

{Farmer and sons...dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma. 1936, Arthur Rothstein}

{Destitute pea pickers in California... (Often referred to as "Migrant Mother"). 1936, Dorothea Lange}

{Dust storm damage. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 Apr. Arthur Rothstein}

{Dust is too much for this farmer's son in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. 1936 Apr. Arthur Rothstein}

{The bleached skull of a steer on the dry sun-baked earth of the South Dakota Badlands, 1936 May.}

{Washstand in the dog run...Hale County, Alabama. 1935 or 1936, Walker Evans}

{Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937, Dorothea Lange}

{Houses, Atlanta, Georgia. 1936, Walker Evans}

{Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama. 1936, Walker Evans}

Walker Evans

Errol Morris of the New York Times is doing a 7-part series of posts on Depression-era photos made by Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein. It's called The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock. The focus of the series is the "purity" or lack thereof in photos the two men took of, respectively, Alabama sharecropper families and the Dust Bowl tragedy in Oklahoma. He's established that both photographers moved things around a bit when taking photos. There's no claim that photos were completely faked, but only that the contents of a shot were rearranged. He believes the photographers were motivated by polemical as much as aesthetic purposes and has asked but not (yet) answered the question of whether our knowledge of the changes lessens our appreciation of the photos.

At one point he lists some of the decisions photographers made back in the era of silver-gelatin film photography. These include the selection of camera and film format, the choice of lens focal length, choice of shutter speed and aperture; they include what time of day to shoot and under what lighting conditions, what subject is chosen, how a human subject is posed, how a shot is framed, and what position the lens is given with respect to the subject; and they include decisions about whether the image is cropped after developing and whether it is dodged or retouched when printing. There are so many factors that affect the impact of a photograph that a small alteration of objects can seem a small thing to a photographer.

He also points out that the two men were acting as government employees — they worked under Roy Stryker in the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration and, while Stryker gave them lots of help and information, he didn't caution them about maintaining documentary purity.

Moving beyond the question of manipulated images, Morris asks about the editorial selection of images for publication. The photographers would take tens, even hundreds of shots at a location but only a few would be distributed to news media by the FSA (or in the case of Walker Evans, also produced in a book: James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men).

An online history course — History Matters — addresses this issue in a segment called Posing for the Camera Walker Evans Photographs Alabama Sharecroppers.* It gives three images from a set Evans made of Floyd Burroughs, a Southern sharecropper and his family, and discusses the likely rationale for selection of only one for the Agee book. The one selected has become iconic, that is to say one of the most widely-known and -reproduced of the FSA photographs.

As it happens, one of the two remaining (unchosen) examples in the online course has also become widely known. It shows the Burroughs family in Sunday clothes as a group portrait by the side of their house on a bright sunny morning.


Morris reproduces this image in one of the "Inappropriate Alarm Clock" posts in an interview with William Stott, author of Documentary Expression and Thirties America. In response to Morris' questions, Stott says he saw the photo in an exhibition of Evans' photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971. It impressed him because it shows a certain amount of pride, a certain amount of contentment. It showed Burroughs, in Morris' words, "radiating life and virility and joy." This, he said, counterbalanced the images in Agee's book of people beaten down and at the end of their strength. Stott is saying, in effect, that the Agee book should have given all three of the photos in the online course, not just the one, famous as it is.

There's more to be said about this family portrait. It's found not only in MOMA collections, but also at George Eastman House where it is fully described: Burroughs Family, Hale County, Alabama. However, although it is certainly also to be found in the LC collections of Evans' photographs, it is not easily found there (I couldn't find it in a couple hours of searching).

All the discussion about the FSA photos is interesting — and there's a great deal more of it. I agree with Stott that a balanced cross section of photos is more interesting than individual ones selected for the the compelling stories they appear to tell.

So, here are some other of Walker Evans' photographs that I found while searching for that one. Unless otherwise noted, all were taken in the Summer of 1936. All have captions supplied by LC staff from information supplied by FSA. All come from FSA Collection in the Prints and Photos Division of the Library of Congress. Click image to view full size.

{Sharecropper Bud Fields and his family at home taken in 1935 or 1936. Hale County, Alabama}

{A digital image made from a print rather than the negative.}

{Lily Rogers Fields and children. Hale County, Alabama}

{Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs, cotton sharecroppers, Hale County, Alabama}

{Floyd Burroughs, cotton sharecropper. Hale County, Alabama}

{Frank Tengle, Hale County, Alabama}

{Sunday singing: Frank Tengle and family singing hymns}

{Tengle children, Hale County, Alabama}

{Floyd Burroughs and Tengle children, Hale County, Alabama}

{Laura Minnie Lee Tengle, daughter of Frank Tengle}

{Floyd Burroughs and Tengle children, Hale County, Alabama}

{Floyd Burroughs and Tengle children, Hale County, Alabama}

{Floyd Burroughs and Tengle children, Hale County, Alabama}

{Elizabeth and Ida Ruth Tengle, Hale County, Alabama}

{Frank Tengle family, Hale County, Alabama. Sharecroppers}

{William Tengle, Hale County, Alabama}

{Charles Burroughs and Floyd Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama}

{Floyd Burroughs, on mule, Hale County, Alabama}

{Bud Fields in his cotton patch. Hale County, Alabama}

{Mule. Hale County, Alabama}

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Note:

*The course was created by the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).