Question : How do the photographers Walker Evans and Latoya Ruby Frazier portray the importance of family within their work?

Once used only to document information, photography has now flourished into a huge industry, being used for multiple different reasons – for self-expression, for awareness of current events, for political grounds. As once said, “From Daguerre’s age to ours, photography has undergone a transformation, not only technologically but conceptually.”(Bright and Van Erp. 2019:18) The ways to take and portray photos are endless, with each person having an independent reason as to why and how they could utilise photography. Many use this form of expression to focus it on the ones they value the most – family. Family has a significant impact in an individual’s life. They are the first people they are familiarised with in early childhood, they are the ones who make them feel comfortable and safe, and are usually the ones who help them get through when they find themselves stuck in a tough situation.

For my personal study, I will be focusing on the importance of family, specifically my own, and hope to portray them in a way which can express their importance to me. Family has always been important in my life. As mentioned before, they are the first people who we know in our lives, and this creates a special bond from early childhood which cannot be replicated with anyone else or destroyed. Most of my family, including my parents and younger brothers, currently live in London whereas I moved to live in Jersey with my aunt and uncle over a year ago. This evidently means that I don’t see and talk to them as much as I used to, but although we may not end up talking for a week or may not see each other for a few months, we still have that strong connection. This theme relates to the previous work I have been doing on Occupation and Liberation as families were affected during the war, especially those who had family members outside of Jersey and had trouble communicating with them while the island was occupied. We were able to take a look at the Red Cross letters which were sent between people trying to communicate with their loved ones, and were able to see the limited words exchanged between family which were separated.

The two photographers I am looking at are Walker Evans and Latoya Ruby Fraizer, two individuals who both documented family life. I decided that I would be investigating these artists as their works link to the theme which I am looking at. Although Walker Evans didn’t photograph his own family, he did take a look at others and the effect that the Great Depression had on these families. Latoya Ruby is a photographer who looked at her own family and effects that the state of the community had on them. These two photographers also relate to the work I have been doing previous to this, about the Occupation in Jersey, as their photographs revolve around the oppressed and struggling people in a place which wasn’t economically or socially strong at the time, with Walker Evans looking at families who were being effected by the Great Depression and Latoya Ruby looking at her own family within a community which was struggling with racism and economic downfall. To respond to these photographers’ works and my question I will be taking images of my own family from both London and Jersey and plan to edit them in the same black and white way which both Evans and Fraizer used for their images, so there won’t be much experimentation with colour but I will be focusing on factors such as contrast, cropping and under/over exposure. I will be aiming to take these images in a documentary style within the homes of my family members as this is when they are most themselves and the most authentic, which is an important factor of my photoshoot.

Since I am looking at family and hope to portray them and my relationship to them as they would be in their daily lives without any intentional manipulation, my work can be related to the movement of Realism. Realism was a creative movement which originated in France during the 1850s. Individuals who identified as realists rejected the ideas of Romanticism and revolted against the subject matter and overemphasized emotionalism of the movement. Realism in photography portrays things as they are without any abstract or idealised factors put into to change the image. People usually think of Realism within photography as the ‘truth’, since the images haven’t been edited or manipulated to change what is going on within it. However, this may not always be the case, as an image doesn’t need editing to be untruthful. As Giles Duley said, ‘ There is no truth in photography, only honesty’, which could mean that you never really know what the truth is when it comes to images that you haven’t taken yourself, since factors such as angles and camera lenses can change the real situation, so the only thing a photographer can do is be honest about their work.

Family pictures have been around for hundreds of years, with family photos becoming common around the time the camera was invented. Before the invention of the camera, middle to high class families were able to pay for expensive family portraits to be painted for them. Family has always been a main art subject, with individuals wanting to treasure their loved ones and their family legacy by having either a painting or a photo made of them. As cameras evolved and became more popular, photographers were able to find another way of documenting their families, by taking candid images of them within their lives. The subject of family is generally a topic which is related to Realism as many photographers prefer to capture their family relations as they are within their daily lives, with as little changes as possible. My work is the same, as I am planning to document my family from both London and Jersey and portray my relationship with them as they are normally, making my work related to Realism. I am looking at two photographers who both look at family, Walker Evans and Latoya Ruby Frazier, and both their work can link to Realism as they both document the lives of families and the effects of the economic downfalls that their families are facing.

One photographer whose work is related to Realism is Dorothea Lange, a photographer who took images of farmers and migrant workers during the Great Depression and how this economic downfall affected these individuals. This image of the migrant mother and her children is one of Lange’s most famous images, and this is because it conveys a large amount emotions and stories just by looking at the mother’s facial expression. As a realist photographer, this image has not been altered or manipulated and is a clear idea of what was happening during the time of the Great Depression. Dorothea Lange is quite similar to the photographers I have chosen for my question, Latoya Ruby Frazier and Walker Evans. She looks at the oppression and suffering of people during an economic downfall, such as the Great Depression that both she and Walker Evans were looking at, and her work is documentary-like, showcasing the effects of these events.

When it comes to Realism, another photographer who fits into this movement is Walker Evans, a photographer who documented families during the Great Depression in America. Evans is one of the photographers who I am looking at for the theme of family, as he focused on families for most of his images. Walker Evans was a photographer who was best known for his work during the Great Depression, and how his documentary images brought light to the struggles of family life within small towns in America. Most of his images appear to be candid, although there are a few portraits here and there within his work. One of his prime influences was August Sander, a German portrait and documentary photographer, and has been described as the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.

The image above is from his series Cotton Tenants, where he photographed three families in Hale County, Alabama, America. In this black and white image you can see a family of five and a dog standing on what looks likes a front porch. By the worn down clothes they are wearing and the poor state of the building they stand by, you can assume that they are a working class family and are struggling with poverty. You are immediately drawn to the man standing in the middle of the image, in front of the rest of his family. This may have been done on purpose to represent his importance to the family as the typical ‘bread-winner’, as during this era it was the husband who worked while the wife and children stayed at home.

The Great Depression was the worst economic downfall that has happened in American history. The stock market crash in October 1929 was the beginning of the Great Depression, and due to this by 1933 unemployment was at 25% and more than 5000 banks had gone out of business. The average family income during this time was $1,500, 40% less than what families usually earned before the start of the economic downfall, in turn leaving families stressed with just under half of their usual income gone. For his series ‘Cotton Tenants : Three Families’, Walker Evans photographed three families who were struggling with poverty to capture the effects of the Great Depression in Hale County, Alabama, and to expose the effects of this to the world. The people in the image above was one of the many families in that area who were facing destitution due to the economical decline during that era. At the time Evans photographed these three families, it was the height of the Great Depression and this was the time where people were finding it the hardest to cope. You can clearly see the effects it had on this family – they wouldn’t have been able to afford clean clothes, as portrayed by the rags they wore, nutritious food or the right equipment to fix and clean their house. However, I believe by having family during that time it made it easier for them to survive the depression, as although they were struggling with money and their basic needs, they’re still together on that porch.

The other photographer I am looking at for my question based on the importance of family is Latoya Ruby Frazier, a photographer who documented her own family during an economic downfall and a struggle of racism within her home down of Braddock, Pennsylvania. For her series ‘ The Notion of Family’, she looks at how these events within her town have effected her family within their home. There are two photographers who were large influences for her work – Carrie Mae Weems and Dawoud Bey. Carrie Mae Weems is considered to be “one of the most influential contemporary American artists”, and has investigated many factors through her works such as family, sexism, class, cultural identity, political systems and the consequences of power. When it comes to her influence on Frazier’s work, the topics which they both explore are quite similar, with Weems looking at cultural identity as one of her topics she has explored and Frazier looking at racism within her community. Frazier has also seemed to have taken on the same type of images which Weems has, such as candid images of others, and gone with the same use of black and white images which Weems has. Dawoud Bey is an American photographer who uses documentary style techniques to ” challenge stereotypical images of African Americans and other historically marginalized groups. “ Bey would have been an influence for Frazier as the topics which they both explore are similar to each other, with Bey looking at racism and stereotypes of African Americans and Fraizer looking at the racism within her community.

In this image you can see two women sat on the floor in the middle of the black and white image. They both look at the camera with two different expressions, the older woman having a slight frown on her face while the younger woman looks a bit happier with a hint of a smile on her lips. They look like they’ve been interrupted from the middle of a conversation that they were having. They seem comfortable in each other’s presence, which indicated that they’ve known each other for a while and have a bond. The older woman looks to be the younger woman’s grandmother, as they both look similar to each other. The room they’re sitting in seems to be the living room, with the television and numerous other decorations, including the grandfather clock in the background. By the look of the room they don’t look like they’re struggling with money, but they don’t look like they are a middle or high class family either.

In Latoya Ruby’s series ‘ The Notion of Family’, she looks at the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, through the use of her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania which became financially depressed after the fall of the steel industry in the 1970s-1980’s. To look at these issues she focuses on three generations of her family – her grandmother, her mother and herself – and photographs them in their home. She follows the social documentary style of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to create images which were inspired by Gordon Parks, who promoted the camera as a weapon for social justice. Her images, including the one above, are raw photographs of her family and captures the authenticity of the moment. With the use of black and white images, she is able to highlight the beauty of her home town and how this place has affected her family’s life along with the other people who lived in the area. By taking images of her family still together and well within this difficult time, she is demonstrating the importance of having family through her work.

Both photographers include family – in Walker Evans’ image you can clearly see the family of five standing together on the porch, and in Latoya Ruby’s image you can see a grandmother and her granddaughter. When it comes to the contexts of their images, they are similar in the way in which they both look at the effect of economic downfall on families. Evans was exploring the effect of the Great Depression on families within small communities, while Ruby was looking at her own family in the time of racism and economic downfall in her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. They also show the importance of family in dire situations, with each of them photographing families which seem to have strong relationships in times which were socially and financially difficult for them. However it is different in the way which while Evans was looking at multiple families and how they were effected by a country-wide event, Ruby was only looking at the effects of economic downfall in her small hometown, and her own family. As Latoya Ruby was looking at her own family, she had more of a connection with those who she was photographing and knew them well, so she could shape her photographs to suit their personalities, lives, ect, whereas Walker Evans didn’t know the families personally and did not have that connection, so he may not have been able to take images which truly reflect who these people are. When it comes to each of them as individuals, there are differences between the two which could effect the way they take their images and look at the events which they are documenting, such as the fact that Frazier is a woman and Evans is a man, so they would each look at the events in different ways – through a man’s point of view and a woman’s point of view. By investigating these two artists they have inspired and influenced my work greatly by showing me ways of approaching my chosen theme of family, such as taking candid images of them within their own homes or out socialising. Latoya Ruby Frazier was able to portray the importance of family through the use of exploring her own family members and taking images of them during a time of financial downfall and racism within her community, and Walker Evans was able to show this by taking images of three families who were just pulling through during the Great Depression.

Bibliography:

• Bright, S. and Van Erp, H.(2019), Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing House
• Parkin(2018), Realism and Honesty in Photography, www.onlandscape.co.uk (https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2018/07/realism-and-honesty-in-photography/)
• Carrie Mae Weems Biography, carriemaeweems.net( http://carriemaeweems.net/bio.html)
• Dawoud Bey’s Briography, thehistorymakers.org( https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/dawoud-bey-40)