wartime Washington

Esther Bubley took these two photographs in March 1943. She took both in Washington DC while working for the Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information.

The first is captioned "Women gossiping in a drugstore over cokes" and the second "Riding on a streetcar."





They're both from collections in the Library of Congress Prints and Photos Div.

About a year ago, I did a blog post showing lots of her wartime photos: Esther Bubley

FSA cameras

Walker Evans made sense when he said that the skill of a photographer is shown not so much in technical knowledge as in artistic vision. He knew how to use his equipment but guarded himself against becoming either a journalistic shot-grabber or a within-four-walls studio professional. As he said: "I've always been interested in cameras. I'm even interested — well, I was interested a little bit too much even in the technique of photography. It's a fascinating thing. But it hasn't much to do with art and an artist had better stay away from it, not get absorbed in it. It's too absorbing... You can do all kinds of tricks. It's just better not to. I am after mastery of what I want to do; that is, I want to be able to do what I want to do, and do it well" (quote source is here).

Another FSA photographer, Ben Shahn, did not even attempt to gain technical competence. He took up a camera out of dissatisfaction with the quick sketches he would make of street scenes. He talked his way into a contract to do some photography for FSA and got his first and only lesson in camera work from Walker Evans. Here's how he described the instruction:

One day when he was going off to the South Seas and I was helping him into his taxi, I said, "Walker, remember your promise to show me how to photograph?" He says, "Well, it's very easy, Ben. F9 on the sunny side of the street, F4.5 on the shady side of the street. For a twentieth of a second hold your camera steady," and that was all.
-- (quote source is here)

The two — Evans and Shahn — marked the extremes of technical knowledge and ignorance among FSA photographers. Most were skillful without having Evans' extensive experience. Most had enough versatility to work with more than one type of camera, but no others had his ability to develop, print, and enlarge photos as well as take them.

They all doubtless agreed with him that the quality of their finished work was less dependent on their equipment than on their ability to work well with human subjects, to select and frame the scenes they shot, to visualize in two dimensions what lay before them in three dimensions, to see the patterns of light and dark, and other matters having less to do with photographic technology than with artistic insight.

It's interesting, all the same, to see what cameras the FSA photographers used and to think about the ways their equipment affected the images they took.

Favorite Cameras of Walker Evans

Evans and Shahn show extremes in their camera preferences. Shahn used a small 35mm one with a retracting lens while Evans, who used a variety of cameras, preferred an enormous 8 x 10 view camera like this:

{source: largeformatphotography.info}

These cameras were bulky, heavy, slow to set up and use. They couldn't be used without the support of a large tripod. The photographer loaded film into them one sheet at a time and needed to keep handy big boxes of light-tight film holders for unexposed and exposed negatives.

These cameras were also extremely flexible. Both the camera itself and the lens plate could be moved independently.¹ The photographer could view the full size image on cut glass screen before taking a shot, permitting extreme accuracy in both composition and focus.²

The huge size of the negative allowed the photographer to make large prints of extremely high quality.³

Outside the studio, the bulkiness of the 8 x 10 view camera made it impractical for any but static subjects (such as buildings and landscapes). It was not well suited for street scenes and wholly unsuited for candid and action shots. In using this camera to make images of human subjects in urban environments, Evans showed an extraordinary photographic skill.

{Walker Evans using his 8 x 10 view camera; source: xroads.virginia.edu}⁴

Walker Evans sometimes used smaller cameras than the 8 x 10 view camera. This photo shows him with what looks like a Plaubel Makina which could be used with 3¼ x5½ inch (6cm x 9cm) film sheets or 120 roll film.

{source: xroads.virginia.edu}

Here is a Plaubel Makina:

{Plaubel Makina; source: cosmonet.org}

Favorite Cameras of Arthur Rothstein and Jack Delano

Other FSA photographers liked to use a 4 x 5 press type camera. This photo shows Arthur Rothstein with one of these; it does not look like the standard press Graflex.

{source: Library of Congress}

Jack Delano used a standard press Speed Graphic Graflex like this one from the early 1930s:

{source: graflex.org}

Favorite Cameras of Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange also liked the 4 x 5. She used the press Graflex and the Graflex Series D reflex model. Here she is with the press model:

{source: observatoriofucatel.cl}

This shot shows her with the reflex:

{source: Library of Congress}

{Here is a crop detail showing the reflex camera}

This is the Graflex Series D 4 x 5 reflex:

{source: luminous-landscape}

Favorite Cameras of Esther Bubley

Esther Bubley used smaller cameras than the previous three of her FSA peers. Her camera of choice was usually a Rolleiflex 2¼ x 2¼ (or 6cm. x 6cm.). These photos show her with this double-lens reflex camera:

{source: estherbubley.com}

{source: Library of Congress}

{Detail of Bubley with Rolleiflex; source: Library of Congress}

This is a camera model close to the one she used:

{source: rifaat.org}

The cameras used by the men encouraged eye-level use and most of their photos are taken at this level. In contrast the reflex cameras used by Lange and Bubley made it easier for them to make waist-level shots. For this reason you see quite a few low-level photos from them. Notice that the photo of Bubley on the car roof shows two other cameras, both of them 35mm compact models. Virtually all the FSA photographers carried at least one 35mm camera along with them whatever their format preference. Bubley's pair look like they might be the Contax model favored by Lee and Mydans and shown below.⁵

Favorite Cameras of Russell Lee and Carl Mydans

Most of the FSA photographers carried 35mm cameras with them and used them for action shots, candids, and the like. These handy, fast, easy to operate cameras were also the camera of choice for Russell Lee and Carl Mydans as well as Ben Shahn. Lee and Mydans used Contax cameras like this one:

{source: Contax I; zeisscamera.com}

The others tended to carry Leicas like this one:

{Leica IIIc; source: dargate.com}

Shahn would take surreptitious candid shots using a reflex attachment to his viewfinder. Here's a Leica with this set-up:

{Leica II with WINKO right angle finder; source: pacificrimcamera}

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Additional sources:

View camera article on wikipedia

How to get started in large format photography article on LargeFormatPhotography.info

Large Format Camera Technique, explains some aspects of operation of the view camera

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Notes:

¹ This image shows the ways in which the lens plane and the film plane can be shifted in using a view camera.

{source: largeformatphotography.info}

² This image shows a ground glass focusing screen at the back of a view camera.

{source: largeformatphotography.info}

³ See Film Size Comparison to see how much larger is an 8 x 10 sheet of film than are the 35mm and intermediate size images.

⁴ The shot he is taking:

{Bethlehem graveyard and steel mill. Pennsylvania, Nov. 1935. By Walker Evans; source: Library of Congress}

⁵ Although it looks like she's got the Contax II model, like this one:

{Contax II; source: ldtomei.googlepages}

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}

Esther Bubley

In 1943 Esther Bubley took these photos for the Farm Security Administration. Most come from Washington DC, her home base, but there are many as well from a series of bus trips she took in September. They show changes in daily life brought about by the entry of the U.S. into World War II — men in uniform, women taking over men's jobs, and the like — but they also show things going on as they had before, including the injustices suffered by American Negroes at the time.

There's information about her and her work at the bottom of this page. Except as noted, all photos come from LC's Prints and Photos Division.

Most of the FSA photographers used 35mm rangefinder cameras such as the famous Leica III, but Bubley used a twin lens reflex camera and this accounts both for the innovative use she made of low-angle shots and for the distinctive square images. Hers was not the famous Rolleiflex, but was almost certainly an Ikoflex. In 1944 Gordon Parks took a photo of her with the camera. It's easy to tell it's not a Rollei but it took me quite a while to identify it as an Ikoflex (see images below).

Click images to view full size.

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January, Washington DC

{Woman war worker in a woman's boarding house listening to a murder mystery on the radio}

{Detail of this image}

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March, Washington DC

{Spectator in the National Gallery of Art on a Sunday afternoon}

{Sitting on the steps of the National Gallery of Art on a Sunday afternoon}

{Members of the congregation during services at the First Wesleyan Methodist church}

{The Campbell family at home after church}

{Detail of this image}

{Detail of this image}

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April, Washington DC

{Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill, a bar and restaurant waiting for a pickup. "I come in here pretty often, sometimes alone, mostly with another girl, we drink beer, and talk, and of course we keep our eyes open--you'd be surprised at how often nice, lonesome soldiers ask Sue, the waitress, to introduce them to us" }

{Detail of this image}

{Jitterbugs at an Elk's Club dance, the "cleanest dance in town" }

{Detail of this image}

{Pin boy at a bowling alley}

{Detail of this image}

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May, Washington DC

{Children watching the animals at the National Zoological Park}

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June, Washington DC and Arlington VA

{Hattie B. Sheehan, a streetcar conductor for the Capitol Transit Company}

{Benie Lee Neal and Patricia Kaufman are checking the perforated tape at the Western Union telegraph office}

{Arlington, Virginia. Waiting for the bus at Arlington Farms, a residence for women who work in the U.S. government for the duration of the war}

{Arlington, Virginia. Sailors bicycled over to Arlington Farms, a residence for women who work in the U.S. government for the duration of the war, from Washington in search of a date}

{Arlington, Virginia. Women engaged in conversation on a street car}

{Listening to the U.S. Army band play at a free concert in front of the Capitol}

{Detail of this image}

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July, Washington DC and Glen Echo MD

{Glen Echo, Maryland. Sun bathers on the sand beach at the swimming pool in the Glen Echo amusement park. Photo shows Claire Bubley in the foreground and Enid Bubley behind her. (Source: Enid Bubley's son, Jerry Raines, 2006). }

{Washington, D.C. Negroes in front of their home, which is an alley dwelling near the capitol}

{Washington, D.C. Negroes in front of their alley dwellings near the capitol}

{Detail of this image}

{Detail of this image}

{Detail of this image}

{Detail of this image}

{Washington, D.C. A worker for the American Rescue Society soliciting funds}

{Detail of this image}

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September, bus trips

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Sign at bus station. Rome, Georgia}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Waiting for the bus at the Memphis terminal}

{Detail of this image}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals}

{Detail of this image}

{Street scene in a town in Ohio}

{A rest stop for Greyhound bus passengers on the way from Louisville, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, with separate accommodations for colored passengers}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Men sitting by road side on Sunday afternoon, between Memphis and Chattanooga}

{Passengers on a Greyhound bus going from Chicago, Illinois to Cincinnati, Ohio. Most of the standing passengers are local fares going from their farms to town}

{Bus trip from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Washington, D.C. Schoolgirl waiting to get on bus at small town in Tennessee}

{Bus trip from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Washington, D.C. Schoolgirl waiting to get on bus at small town in Tennessee}

{ Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Passengers in the waiting room of the Greyhound bus terminal}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Passengers standing in aisles on Memphis-Chattanooga Greyhound bus}

{Detail of this image}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Waiting for a bus at the Memphis station}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Hailing a Macon-bound bus on the highway in Georgia}

{A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals. Small boy waiting for the bus at Chattanooga.}

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October, Washington DC

{Students entering the building at Woodrow Wilson High School}

{Feet of a student at Woodrow Wilson High School}

{Algebra students at Woodrow Wilson High School}

{Listening to the teacher's instructions in a physical education class at Woodrow Wilson High School}

{Watching a football game}

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December, Washington DC

{Lynn Massman, wife of a second class petty officer who is studying in Washington, cooking dinner}

{A sailor getting some help in wrapping his Christmas gifts at the United Nations service center}

{A picture-taking machine in the lobby at the United Nations service center}

{Detail of this image}

{Detail of this image}

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About Esther Bubley

{Esther Bubley, self-portrait c. 1950}

{This shot shows her Ikoflex camera and her flash technique; ca. 1945; source: flickr}

{Esther Bubley at Bayway Oil Refinery, by Gordon Parks, December 1944}

{Esther Bubley with her Ikoflex iii 853/16; photo by John Vachon, 1944; source: flickr}

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LC had a web page from an exhibit by ESTHER BUBLEY. It says:

Military and political events overseas were not the only subjects reporters and photographers covered during World War II. Photographer Esther Bubley (b. 1921) found ample subject matter to explore on the American homefront as the nation mobilized for war.

Twenty-year-old Bubley arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1941, fresh from art school and a short stint with Vogue and eager to earn a living with her camera. Although she soon found work as a lab technician at the National Archives, Bubley's ambition was to work for Roy Stryker. Stryker, head of the documentary photography project of the Historical Section, Farm Security Administration (FSA) Documentary Photo project from 1935 to 1943, was an outstanding mentor and teacher, who attracted young photographers to work for him.

During her off-hours, Bubley set out to prove her camera skills by snapping wartime subjects around the nation's capital. Her unvarnished images of life in the city's boarding houses for war workers impressed Stryker enough to recruit the aspiring photographer into the Office of War Information (OWI), where the Historical Section had been relocated.

OWI sent Bubley on at least one cross-country bus trip, during which she produced hundreds of images of a country in transition from the doldrums of the Great Depression to the fevered pace of war. Unlike many of her colleagues, however, Bubley was not drawn to the awesome industrial complex spawned by the war, preferring instead to focus on average Americans. "Put me down with people, and it's just overwhelming," Bubley said of her focus on the human dimension of mobilization.

About Bubley, see also:

Esther Bubley: American Photo-Journalist

Esther Bubley, photojournalist

Esther Bubley: Techniques and Equipment

More photos of Esther Bubley on flickr

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Ikoflex images:

{Ikoflex III (853/16). This camera has a distinctive Albanda finder and the shape of the lens mount is unique. It was produced 1939-40. The operating lens is a Tessar 2.8 in Compur-Rapid. Source of these images: pacificrimcamera

{Ikoflex image from an eBay auction}

About the Ikoflex:

More images and a 1939 advertisement: Ikoflex III 853/16

A flickr page on the camera: Ikoflex III 853/16