Essay plan

  • Essay question: How does Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange portray the importance of family ?
  • Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question.

I will be looking at Walker Evans and Latoya Ruby Frazier as they both include images of family while a change in their daily lives were happening. Walker Evans based his images when the great depression was happening and took many images of large families during this time.

Image result for Walker Evans great depression
Walker evans

Although he doesn’t look at immigration and the effect of being apart from a family member, he does look at how having a family helps when one is going through a hard time. In his images many of the family members smile even though the great depression was happening at that time.

Latoya Ruby is a photographer who photographed her family while an economical downfall and a rise of racism was happening within their hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

I chose her as one of my photographers because her images look at her own family.

To respond to their work I will be taking images of my own family, the family I have in London which includes my parents and younger brothers, and the family I live with in Jersey.

  • Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian. Link to power points about isms and movements M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Personal Study
  • My work connects to Realism
  • Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
  • Walker Evans
  • Influences : August Sander
  • Photographer during the Great Depression
  • Series Cotton Tenants
  • Looks at three families in Hale County, Alabama
  • Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
  • Latoya Ruby Frazier
  • Influences : Carrie Mae Weems and Dawoud Bey
  • Photographed her own family
  • Her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania had an economic downfall because of the steel industry collapsing, and had a problem with racism which affected her family.
  • Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
  • They both look at families during a crisis
  • they both use black and white images
  • They both both a documentary style
  • They give different viewpoints because of their differences – Frazier gives a woman’s and a person of colour’s viewpoint, Evans gives a man’s viewpoint
  • They look at families in different contexts – Frazier looks at her own family in a small town affected by a local economic downfall, Evans looks at three different families during the Great Depression which would have affected the whole of America.
  • Frazier is looking at her own family so she has those personal connections while Evans is looking at families who he has never met before.
  • Bibliography: List all relevant sources used

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/walker-evans-documentarian-of-the-great-depression-2106462/

Jesse Rhodes

November 4 2010

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