Documentary photography

For my personal study I looked at Dorothea Lange who was a documentary photographer who worked for The Farm Security Administration (FSA) which was Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty and make people aware of what was going on. I am going to look further into this by researching Walker Evans who also worked for the FCA.

Walker evens

I want my work to be – “literate, authoritative, transcendent”.

Walker Evans is a documentary photographer who is most well known for his work while at the FCA which was documenting the effects that The Great Depression had on people.  During 1935 Walker photographed in the South of America.  In 1936, he was sent by Fortune Magazine on a project to Hale County, Alabama where he stayed with three tenant white families photographing them during the depression. The photographs he took were not published by Fortune Magazine but later in 1941 these photographs were published and considered to be a ground breaking book called ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’. This book included detailed accounts of the three farming families living in rural poverty. These photographs like the ones of Dorothea Lange were used as ‘ icons’ to represent poverty and the depression era in America. Walker Evans continued to work for the FCA until 1938, he then became an independent  photographer with his own first exhibition held later that year at The Museum of Modern Art.

https://lis471.wordpress.com/walker-evans/

I think that Walker Evans photographs particularly the photographs from the Alabama series achieve what most documentary photographer want. I think they look very raw and credible. As well as interesting.  Being used to seeing portraits of people in a very glamourous way, looking at some of Walker’s photographs make me feel a bit uncomfortable.  I think they portray the true likeliness of the person, although most of his photographs look as if they gave been staged I think they still manage to capture something genuine although I can not pin point what this is.

Examples of portraits from ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’