Lecture 9: Reframing America
Required Reading
The readings for this module are pdf articles available for download.
"Reframing America" by Terence Pitts
"The Family of Man A Reappraisal of 'The Greatest Exhibition of All Time'" by
Bill Jay
Lecture
This module explores both, the aspects of immigration revealed through
photographs taken by immigrant artists from an exhibition titled "Reframing
America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers", and the
commonality of mankind as portrayed in the seminal photography exhibit The
Family of Man .
"Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant
Photographers"
"Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers"
was originally one exhibition in a three-part exhibition series titled "Points of
Entry," that was organized collaboratively, though curated individually, by the
Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA; the Center for Creative
Photography in Tucson, AZ; and The Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams
Center for Photography in San Francisco, CA.
Alexander Alland, Robert Frank, John Gutmann, Otto Hagel, Hansel Mieth,
Lisette Model, and Marion Palfi, are seven photographers who came to
America during the period between 1920–1950. Millions of people left their
homelands during that time to seek a better life in America. Often fleeing war,
revolution, and persecution, they came in search of freedom, as well as
economic and artistic opportunity. The photographers in this exhibition were
among these immigrants. Their work speaks of life in America and of their
feelings and experiences as immigrants in a new land. Like the farmers,
laborers, teachers, and musicians who came to America as immigrants, these
artists had ideas and dreams about what their new country would be like.
Partly because they looked at America with fresh eyes, and partly because
the America they found did not always correspond to the America they
expected, their photographs sometimes addressed issues that continue to
haunt this country: poverty, injustice, and intolerance. At the same time, they
recorded uniquely American themes such as the mass consumption of
consumer goods, jazz, and our nation’s love of the automobile. These artists
also brought European equipment, ideas, and training with them, which was to
have a tremendous influence on American photography. The result was a
startling new vision of America.
Alexander Alland
Alexander Alland was born in Russia in 1902. He became interested in
photography as a boy and made his own camera out of cardboard when he
was twelve. In 1923, fleeing civil war in his homeland and then again in
Turkey, he came to the United States on a steerage boat. He was just twentyone years old. On his second evening in America, he stood in Times Square
in New York City, completely fascinated by the people, the cars, the city lights,
and all things American. For Alland, being an American meant sharing "the
desire for happiness, prosperity, and liberty," no matter what one’s racial or
national background might be. In his photography, he respected and
celebrated things that made people different. At the same time, he sought to
capture themes that unified people of many backgrounds. His own experience
gave him insight into the conflict that immigrants still face between their desire
to keep and remember the languages and traditions of their old country and
the need to learn the skills necessary to succeed in their new country. Alland
died in 1989.
Alexander Alland
Untitled, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
Alland’s photograph of a newspaper stand shows us evidence of a
multicultural society, one where many languages are spoken. A non-English
speaking immigrant would have needed to find work and a place to live and
would surely have welcomed a newspaper written in his or her native
language. Alland photographed this scene from eye level rather than from
above or below. This angle makes the view like our own, as it would be if we
were walking up to the newspaper stand.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph?
* Why do you think Alexander Alland made the rack of newspapers his subject?
* How many different languages can you count in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel in a new
country where you did not understand the language?
* What are some of the things you would be concerned about?
Alexander Alland
Photomontage, c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
In the 1940s, Alland experimented with different ways to display photographs. He
produced large photomurals (billboard-size photographs) for the public library in Newark,
New Jersey. He also collaged many photographs into one image. A good example of
the latter is his Photomontage, which depicts well-dressed American children from many
racial backgrounds. Their images overlap a large map that shows where various ethnic
communities have developed in the United States. Their teacher is pointing out
locations on the map.
Note: the teacher is the photographer’s wife, Alexandra, and the pupil on her right is
their son, Alexander Alland, Jr.
Questions to consider:
* What do the words "America—A Nation of People from Many Countries" in the
photograph mean to you?
* How can you tell that this is a made-up scene rather than a real scene?
* What is the first thing you notice in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how the children look and feel?
* Do you think this is a realistic interpretation of life in America for these children at that
time? Why or why not?
* How can you tell that this photographic collage was not created very recently?
Robert Frank
Born into a Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, Robert Frank was fifteen when war broke
out across Europe. While his family was unharmed in Switzerland, he later said that
"being Jewish and living with the threat of Hitler must have been a very big part of my
understanding of people that were put down or who were held back." Near the end of
the war, Frank took up photography as a way of breaking away from the restrictions of
his wealthy family and of Switzerland. In 1947 he moved to New York City for a year.
Subsequently, he began traveling the world and taking photographs for magazines such
as Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and the New York Times.
Frank’s first impression of America was one of delight. He stated that "when I got to
America I saw right away that everything was open, that you could do anything. And
how you were accepted just depended on what you did with it." This optimistic opinion
of America would change. Over the next seven years, he became disillusioned with the
controls the magazines had over his work. In addition, as he experienced the fast pace
of life in America and observed the importance Americans placed on money, he saw a
country of great wealth, but little joy.
After winning a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in 1955, Frank, his wife Mary, and
their two children set off in their car on a series of cross-country trips. Frank’s intent was
to document a culture that was uniquely American. The result was the now-famous
book of Frank’s photographs called The Americans, which was first published in 1958.
Frank’s style of photography and the images he made for The Americans were not
widely accepted at first, perhaps because the America that Frank photographed wasn’t
the America that those born and raised here saw or wanted to see. Americans viewed
his photographs as a harsh criticism of his adopted country. His intention, however, was
not to censure America, but to capture the complex American experience. Other artists
were among the first to recognize that Frank’s style expressed, in a very personal way,
his feelings about this country. What better way to record a distressed society than with
odd views, glaring light, and different degrees of focus? Perfection did not have a place
in Frank’s troubled and complex vision of America. His approach to photography was
not what Americans were used to seeing in pictures. This kind of experimentation broke
existing rules in photography and resulted in images that seemed, to some, to lack craft
and refinement.
The Americans went on to become a major influence for artists during the 1960s
because they also identified with Frank’s modern approach to interpreting the world in
which they lived. Today, Frank divides his time between New York and Nova Scotia.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Charleston, South Carolina 1955-56
Questions to consider:
* Where was the artist when he took this photograph?
* What was left out of the frame?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feel of this close view?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light in this photograph?
* What parts of this image are in sharp focus? What parts are out of focus?
* Does having some parts in focus and some parts out of focus add to the mood?
How?
* What do you notice first? Discuss.
* Do you find that this is a confusing photograph? Why or why not?
* Do you think that sometimes the world is a confusing place? Explain.
Robert Frank: The Americans
Robert Frank established a new iconography for contemporary America,
comprised of bits of bus depots, lunch counters, strip developments, empty
spaces, cars, and unknowable faces. This iconography has b ecome a
common coin, [and] here the original acuity of Frank's own sensibility is alive
and relevant." -- John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art
Robert Frank's book The Americans represented a significant challenge to
America's image of itself. Frank's pictures broke all the rules of photography.
Photography before Frank was pristine: carefully focused, carefully lit. Frank
would intentionally lose focus, his work was shadowy a nd grainy, full of
unconventional cropping and angles. He broke the rules in order to be true to
his vision of America he saw in his travels across the country in 1955 and
1956. Most photojournalism made around the time Frank was photographing
The Americans was optimistic and upbeat, reflecting the attitude of a
prosperous post-war America. Such attitudes can be seen in the popular 1955
exhibition: The Family of Man. Frank's work clashed with the prevailing trend
in photography. In 1958 he wrote: "...I do not anticipate that the onlooker will
share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on
his mind - something has been accomplished." When the Americans was first
published abroad and in the U. S., it was sharply criticized. But the
popularization of the beat movement - the second edition of The Americans
featured an introduction by Jack Kerouac - helped Frank to reach a broader
and more accepting audience. Frank's once avant-garde style on the 1950's is
now taken for granted. We see it daily in print advertisements for jeans or in
music videos on MTV. But Frank's original photographs are still extraordinary
and surprisingly contemporary. This exhibition at the Juanita Kreps Gallery courtesy of the Addison Gallery of Art - is a rare opportunity to see the vintage
photographs that radically changed photography and our relationship to it. -Elizabeth Kunreuther, Curator for the Center for Documentary Studies
That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music
comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that's what Robert Frank
has captured in the tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road
around practically forty-eight states in an old used car (on Guggenhiem
Fellowship) and with the agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange
secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before
on film. - Jack Kerouac, from his introduction to The Americans. In 1955, the
Swiss photographer Robert Frank traveled throughout the United States by
car and returned with a bleak portrait of what the American road had to offer.
As Kerouac writes in his introduction, Frank's photographs had "sucked a sad,
sweet, poem out of America," a sadness found in the forlorn looks of dime
store waitresses, funeral attendees, and human faces rendered
unrecognizable in the glare of jukeboxes. The slightly offset angles and the
blurred focus of many of the photographs suggest the n ervousness and
dislocation of the people they capture. Frank dispels any romantic notions of
the lingering pioneer spirit of America by presenting a landscape of people
and places absent of hope and promise. Though Swiss by birth, Frank
traveled the world before settling in the United States in 1953. He eventually
befriended the Beat poets (Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction to the book
The Americans) and became one of the key visual artists to document this
bohemian subculture in both photography and film, including the highly
influential cinematic work Pull My Daisy. Like the Beats, Frank sought to
reveal the profound tensions he saw in all strata of American society during
the outwardly optimistic 1950s. His photographic journey encompasses rich
and poor, black and white, north and south, offering a glimpse of what makes
these people and places truly American. In 1955, Robert Frank set out to
observe and photograph the United States. Supported by a grant from the
Guggenheim Foundation, he traveled across the country for two years. The
result was The Americans, a visionary work and a milestone in the history of
photography.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
City Fathers (Hoboken) 1955
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Trolley--New Orleans, 1955-56
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Political Rally, Chicago 1956
John Gutmann
Born in German in 1905, John Gutmann trained and exhibited as a painter. Fleeing Nazi
Germany in 1933, he immigrated to the United States. Before leaving Germany, he
bought a camera and arranged to sell photographs of America to be used in German
magazines. He turned to photography as a way of earning money during the Great
Depression in America when jobs were scarce.
Gutmann was fascinated with the new way of seeing the world that photography
provided. He thought of the camera as a human eye, which inspired him to photograph
whatever he saw, however he saw it. When he looked up in wonder at a multistory
parking garage (see Elevator Garage. Chicago, 1936), his camera looked up too.
John Gutmann
Elevator Garage. Garage. 1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© John Gutmann
He described the American city as "foreign—a landscape in which buildings had
replaced mountains, automobiles had replaced trees, and neon and painted signs had
been substituted for flowers." His pictures showed startling new views of familiar scenes.
American photographs were not always as daring and experimental with how they took
photographs at that time, so his work was though of as bold and modern. Gutmann
currently resides in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
John Gutmann
Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco, 1939
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© John Gutmann
Photographing primarily in the street, Gutmann used his eye and his camera to capture
the exuberance and rhythm of America. He found Americans exotic and optimistic
despite the Depression and looming war. His interest in photographing things uniquely
American inspired Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco in 1939. Jazz was an
American form of music popular for its modern sound. In this work, Gutmann has
captured the flare and style of a jazz performance by the High Hatters, with Count Basie
in the background. This scene was photographed during the World’s Fair in San
Francisco.
Gutmann photographed his subject from a worm’s-eye view. Notice, also, how the
framing of the image cuts or crops part of the singers from the view. At the time, this
approach to angle and framing was not widely used by American photographers, but
was a part of the new way of photographing that was being developed in Europe and
making its way to America. Such use was considered odd and daring.
Questions to consider:
* Where do you think Gutmann was standing when he took this photograph?
* What effect does the worm’s-eye view have?
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* What do you notice first when you look at this photograph? Why do you think you
noticed this first?
* What kinds of sounds would this scene produce?
* What adjectives would you use to describe this photograph?
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth were both born in Germany in 1909. They were fifteen
when they met in their homeland and began their lifelong involvement with writing and
photography. Both possessed a curiosity about the world and its people, and together
they left Germany to wander and work their way throughout Europe. Worried about the
economic problems of Europe and the rise of fascism in Germany, Hagel immigrated to
the United States in 1928. Having no money, he had to pay for his passage by working
on a freighter. Mieth followed him to San Francisco in 1930. They eventually married.
Together, they worked as laborers and migrant farm workers, turning to photography
and filmmaking whenever they could.
Hagel and Mieth were confronted with the harsh reality of the Depression in America in
the 1930s. Their first home in California was a tent. Mieth eventually began to
photograph for Time magazine, and both she and Hagel contributed a number of
photographs and photographic essays to Life magazine. Many times they collaborated
on a photograph. Both artists were interested in brining about a better understanding of
real life through their photographs. Their own difficult, working class backgrounds made
them sympathetic to the poor, the unemployed, and the labor unions. Hagel died in
1974. Mieth currently lives in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Hansel Mieth
Outstretched Hands, 1934
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Mieth and Hagel often photographed people who were struggling to make a living. In
this image, Hansel Mieth shows men vying for jobs at the San Francisco Waterfront in
1934.
To guide your students in a discussion, ask questions like:
* For what do you think these men are reaching?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how it makes you feel to know that these
men were unemployed and that they were reaching for job notices?
* What sounds would you expect to hear coming from this scene?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the overall feeling or mood of the
photograph?
* How does the framing add to this feeling?
* How does the angle add to this feeling?
* Have you ever felt desperate about anything in your life? How would you describe
that feeling?
* Do you think that this image communicates the desperation of these men to find
jobs?
Otto Hagel
The Window Washer, 1939
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Otto Hagel once worked as a window washer in New York City. When asked why he
was employed as such, he replied, "Well, with the economy going bad, I want to be able
to see what the giants of industry are doing by looking into their windows!" From this
response we know that he had quite a sense of humor. Hagel’s The Window Washer is
actually a self-portrait. Hagel set up the photograph from inside the room in order to
record himself washing a window of a tall building, high above the streets of New York
City. This is a complicated picture that can be discussed formally for the way it looks
and for what it communicates.
Questions to consider:
* Where was the camera located when this photograph was taken?
* What do you notice first in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* From what direction is the light coming? How can you tell?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are the shapes in this photograph primarily geometric or organic?
* Are there strong contrasts in this photograph?
* Does this photograph have enough variety to hold your interest?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feeling or mood of this work?
Lisette Model
Lisette Model was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1901. Music
was her passion and she studied voice and piano. With Hitler’s rise to power in
Germany, the safety of Jewish people was in question, even in Austria. Model moved
with her family to France in 1926. There, she took up photography so that she would
have a practical skill on which to rely. Photography became both her medium of artistic
expression and her main source of livelihood.
In 1938, Model immigrated to New York City with her husband, who was a painter. She
fell in love with the city’s noisy, narrow streets, tall buildings, fast pace, and energy.
Throughout the next ten years she mainly photographed subjects she found on the city
streets.
Her powerful, though nonconventional, images of New York were frequently seen in
Harper’s Bazaar. It was through her role as a teacher, however, that Model had the
greatest impact on young photographers. For the thirty years before her death in 1983,
she taught her students to open their eyes and respond to their subjects with their
hearts.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
Lisette Model
Window Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York City. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
This image is from Model’s series of photographs of store windows. Photographing this
subject matter allowed her to include information from both sides of the street all at once,
as the reflections showed activity both inside and outside of the windows. By aiming her
camera directly at a window, she captured the feel of the city in a jumble of reflections
and shadows. Framing the view of a photograph in this way was daring and is an
example of the experimental approach to art that European photographers brought to
this country.
Questions to consider:
* How do you know that this is a photograph of a city scene?
* Where was the artist when she took this picture? How can you tell?
* What do you notice first in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What is creating the shadow figures?
* Do you actually see any people in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are there strong contrasts of light and dark?
* What kinds of sounds would you hear if you were in this scene?
Marion Palfi
"I came to the United States in 1940 at a very tragic time in human history and (it might
sound corny) there was this man Roosevelt President, and he talked to the people on
the radio and told about the Four Freedoms and the better world of tomorrow. One day,
I told myself, perhaps I can help with my camera . . ." recalled Marion Palfi. Born in
Berlin of Hungarian and German parents in 1907, Palfi followed her father’s career into
German theater and films. By 1932, her attention had turned to photography.
After fleeing Hitler’s army, first in Germany and then in Holland, she settled in New York
City. As she traveled through various American cities, she was troubled by the racial
intolerance she witnessed there and by the growing problems in urban centers. Using
her camera as a tool to record her concerns, Palfi brought a European perspective to
social issues in the United States, especially those involving poverty, racism, and
injustice. She was disturbed by the unwillingness or inability of American society to
recognize and change them.
Palfi began to describe herself as a "social research photographer." She belonged to a
generation of artists who believed that art could and should effect social change. By
combining her art form with the study of society, Palfi explored and recorded groups that
remained invisible in America: the poor, the oppressed, and the victims of discrimination.
For the next thirty years she traveled across the country photographing these groups.
This intensive work resulted in the production of several large photographic essays,
passionate in their description of the disturbing things she witnessed. Palfi died in 1978.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Marion Palfi
Somewhere in the South, 1946-49
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
This photograph shows us a scene from a bus in the late 1940s. A black couple with a
baby sit, staring straight ahead, underneath the statement:THIS PART OF THE BUS
FOR THE COLORED RACE." It would be almost ten years before the laws requiring
blacks to sit in the back of the bus, while whites sat in the front, would be changed.
Questions to consider:
* How would you describe the looks on the faces of the bus riders? Discuss.
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* Why do you think Palfi chose to photograph her subjects so closely?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how this image makes you feel?
* Do you think that photographs can communicate strong feelings? How?
* Do you think that photographs can be used to promote social change? How?
Marion Palfi
Los Angeles, Anti Klan Meeting Where Klan
Did Strike, 1946-49 from Signs of Discrimination
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
Here, we see a group of people, black and white, that are attending a meeting
organized to fight against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Once, while photographing the KKK
and its activities, Palfi had to smuggle her negatives out of the South because her life
was threatened.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it
first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* How does the light contribute to the mood of the work?
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel if you were made to
sit in the back of a bus because of the color of your skin?
* How do you feel about the fact that, even though the U.S. Constitution declared that
no person could be discriminated against because of his or her race, the South had
laws that required blacks to sit apart from whites.
* What is the Ku Klux Klan?
* Is the KKK still active today?
* Why would white people join with blacks to fight the KKK?
Edward Steichen: The Family of Man
The Family of Man is an exhibition of photos mounted by Edward J. Steichen
in 1955 for the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). While offering
infinitely diverse images of human beings living in the 1950s, it nevertheless
emphatically reminds visitors that they all belong to the same big family. The
32 themes, arranged chronologically, reflect the subjects’ joys and sadnesses,
their satisfactions and their unhappinesses, and their longing for peace, but
also the reality of bloody conflict. They emphasize the role of democratic
structures and, in the exhibition’s conclusion, the United Nations’ role as the
only body capable of saving the world from the “scourge of war, which twice in
our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and [of reaffirming] faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in
the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (Charter of
the United Nations). Regarded as the “greatest photographic enterprise ever
undertaken”, it consists of 503 photographs taken by 273 photographers, both
professional and amateur, famous and unknown, from 68 countries. A huge
undertaking, with unique cultural and artistic dimensions, it had a considerable
influence on other exhibition organizers, stirred public interest in photography
and its tremendous ability to communicate, and conveyed a personal,
humanist message that was both courageous and provocative. The
photographers who took part included Dorothea Lange, Robert Capa, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Jack Delano, Margaret Bourke-White, Esther Bubley, Bert
Hardy, Edward Weston, Matthew Brady, Frank Scherschel, Wayne Miller, Eva
Arnold, Irving Penn, Consuelo Kanaga, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Bill Brandt, Russell
Lee, Carl Mydans, Ben Shahn and Marion Palfi.
Although the Family of Man has become a legend in the history of
photography, it went far beyond the traditional view of what an exhibition
should be. It may be regarded as the memory of an entire era, that of the Cold
War and McCarthyism, in which the hopes and aspirations of millions of men
and women throughout the world were focused on peace. Steichen’s
undertaking is still unique of its kind. Several photographic exhibitions were
more or less clearly inspired by it, for example The Family of Children and The
Family of Women by Jerry Mason, and the First World Photography Exhibition
organized by Karl Pawek in the 1960s for Stern magazine, but none of them
matched the visual dimension or the artistic coherence of the original
American exhibition. The very personal approach of Steichen arouses interest
and exercises minds to this day: There was a new surge of interest in the
exhibition following the opening of the Clervaux museum. Since June 1994
the museum has attracted over 163,000 visitors from all over the world, not
counting the 50,000 who went to see the restored collection in Toulouse,
Tokyo and Hiroshima in 1992 and in the winter of 1993-1994, 38 years after
the first tour. This was the final “round-the-world” trip by the exhibition before it
was permanently installed in the museum.
Visit the Virtual Tour of The Family of Man Exhibition (Links to an external site.)Links to
an external site.
Copyright © Ron Herman, 2007
Lecture 9: Reframing America
Required Reading
The readings for this module are pdf articles available for download.
"Reframing America" by Terence Pitts
"The Family of Man A Reappraisal of 'The Greatest Exhibition of All Time'" by
Bill Jay
Lecture
This module explores both, the aspects of immigration revealed through
photographs taken by immigrant artists from an exhibition titled "Reframing
America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers", and the
commonality of mankind as portrayed in the seminal photography exhibit The
Family of Man .
"Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant
Photographers"
"Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers"
was originally one exhibition in a three-part exhibition series titled "Points of
Entry," that was organized collaboratively, though curated individually, by the
Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA; the Center for Creative
Photography in Tucson, AZ; and The Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams
Center for Photography in San Francisco, CA.
Alexander Alland, Robert Frank, John Gutmann, Otto Hagel, Hansel Mieth,
Lisette Model, and Marion Palfi, are seven photographers who came to
America during the period between 1920–1950. Millions of people left their
homelands during that time to seek a better life in America. Often fleeing war,
revolution, and persecution, they came in search of freedom, as well as
economic and artistic opportunity. The photographers in this exhibition were
among these immigrants. Their work speaks of life in America and of their
feelings and experiences as immigrants in a new land. Like the farmers,
laborers, teachers, and musicians who came to America as immigrants, these
artists had ideas and dreams about what their new country would be like.
Partly because they looked at America with fresh eyes, and partly because
the America they found did not always correspond to the America they
expected, their photographs sometimes addressed issues that continue to
haunt this country: poverty, injustice, and intolerance. At the same time, they
recorded uniquely American themes such as the mass consumption of
consumer goods, jazz, and our nation’s love of the automobile. These artists
also brought European equipment, ideas, and training with them, which was to
have a tremendous influence on American photography. The result was a
startling new vision of America.
Alexander Alland
Alexander Alland was born in Russia in 1902. He became interested in
photography as a boy and made his own camera out of cardboard when he
was twelve. In 1923, fleeing civil war in his homeland and then again in
Turkey, he came to the United States on a steerage boat. He was just twentyone years old. On his second evening in America, he stood in Times Square
in New York City, completely fascinated by the people, the cars, the city lights,
and all things American. For Alland, being an American meant sharing "the
desire for happiness, prosperity, and liberty," no matter what one’s racial or
national background might be. In his photography, he respected and
celebrated things that made people different. At the same time, he sought to
capture themes that unified people of many backgrounds. His own experience
gave him insight into the conflict that immigrants still face between their desire
to keep and remember the languages and traditions of their old country and
the need to learn the skills necessary to succeed in their new country. Alland
died in 1989.
Alexander Alland
Untitled, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
Alland’s photograph of a newspaper stand shows us evidence of a
multicultural society, one where many languages are spoken. A non-English
speaking immigrant would have needed to find work and a place to live and
would surely have welcomed a newspaper written in his or her native
language. Alland photographed this scene from eye level rather than from
above or below. This angle makes the view like our own, as it would be if we
were walking up to the newspaper stand.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph?
* Why do you think Alexander Alland made the rack of newspapers his subject?
* How many different languages can you count in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel in a new
country where you did not understand the language?
* What are some of the things you would be concerned about?
Alexander Alland
Photomontage, c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
In the 1940s, Alland experimented with different ways to display photographs. He
produced large photomurals (billboard-size photographs) for the public library in Newark,
New Jersey. He also collaged many photographs into one image. A good example of
the latter is his Photomontage, which depicts well-dressed American children from many
racial backgrounds. Their images overlap a large map that shows where various ethnic
communities have developed in the United States. Their teacher is pointing out
locations on the map.
Note: the teacher is the photographer’s wife, Alexandra, and the pupil on her right is
their son, Alexander Alland, Jr.
Questions to consider:
* What do the words "America—A Nation of People from Many Countries" in the
photograph mean to you?
* How can you tell that this is a made-up scene rather than a real scene?
* What is the first thing you notice in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how the children look and feel?
* Do you think this is a realistic interpretation of life in America for these children at that
time? Why or why not?
* How can you tell that this photographic collage was not created very recently?
Robert Frank
Born into a Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, Robert Frank was fifteen when war broke
out across Europe. While his family was unharmed in Switzerland, he later said that
"being Jewish and living with the threat of Hitler must have been a very big part of my
understanding of people that were put down or who were held back." Near the end of
the war, Frank took up photography as a way of breaking away from the restrictions of
his wealthy family and of Switzerland. In 1947 he moved to New York City for a year.
Subsequently, he began traveling the world and taking photographs for magazines such
as Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and the New York Times.
Frank’s first impression of America was one of delight. He stated that "when I got to
America I saw right away that everything was open, that you could do anything. And
how you were accepted just depended on what you did with it." This optimistic opinion
of America would change. Over the next seven years, he became disillusioned with the
controls the magazines had over his work. In addition, as he experienced the fast pace
of life in America and observed the importance Americans placed on money, he saw a
country of great wealth, but little joy.
After winning a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in 1955, Frank, his wife Mary, and
their two children set off in their car on a series of cross-country trips. Frank’s intent was
to document a culture that was uniquely American. The result was the now-famous
book of Frank’s photographs called The Americans, which was first published in 1958.
Frank’s style of photography and the images he made for The Americans were not
widely accepted at first, perhaps because the America that Frank photographed wasn’t
the America that those born and raised here saw or wanted to see. Americans viewed
his photographs as a harsh criticism of his adopted country. His intention, however, was
not to censure America, but to capture the complex American experience. Other artists
were among the first to recognize that Frank’s style expressed, in a very personal way,
his feelings about this country. What better way to record a distressed society than with
odd views, glaring light, and different degrees of focus? Perfection did not have a place
in Frank’s troubled and complex vision of America. His approach to photography was
not what Americans were used to seeing in pictures. This kind of experimentation broke
existing rules in photography and resulted in images that seemed, to some, to lack craft
and refinement.
The Americans went on to become a major influence for artists during the 1960s
because they also identified with Frank’s modern approach to interpreting the world in
which they lived. Today, Frank divides his time between New York and Nova Scotia.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Charleston, South Carolina 1955-56
Questions to consider:
* Where was the artist when he took this photograph?
* What was left out of the frame?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feel of this close view?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light in this photograph?
* What parts of this image are in sharp focus? What parts are out of focus?
* Does having some parts in focus and some parts out of focus add to the mood?
How?
* What do you notice first? Discuss.
* Do you find that this is a confusing photograph? Why or why not?
* Do you think that sometimes the world is a confusing place? Explain.
Robert Frank: The Americans
Robert Frank established a new iconography for contemporary America,
comprised of bits of bus depots, lunch counters, strip developments, empty
spaces, cars, and unknowable faces. This iconography has b ecome a
common coin, [and] here the original acuity of Frank's own sensibility is alive
and relevant." -- John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art
Robert Frank's book The Americans represented a significant challenge to
America's image of itself. Frank's pictures broke all the rules of photography.
Photography before Frank was pristine: carefully focused, carefully lit. Frank
would intentionally lose focus, his work was shadowy a nd grainy, full of
unconventional cropping and angles. He broke the rules in order to be true to
his vision of America he saw in his travels across the country in 1955 and
1956. Most photojournalism made around the time Frank was photographing
The Americans was optimistic and upbeat, reflecting the attitude of a
prosperous post-war America. Such attitudes can be seen in the popular 1955
exhibition: The Family of Man. Frank's work clashed with the prevailing trend
in photography. In 1958 he wrote: "...I do not anticipate that the onlooker will
share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on
his mind - something has been accomplished." When the Americans was first
published abroad and in the U. S., it was sharply criticized. But the
popularization of the beat movement - the second edition of The Americans
featured an introduction by Jack Kerouac - helped Frank to reach a broader
and more accepting audience. Frank's once avant-garde style on the 1950's is
now taken for granted. We see it daily in print advertisements for jeans or in
music videos on MTV. But Frank's original photographs are still extraordinary
and surprisingly contemporary. This exhibition at the Juanita Kreps Gallery courtesy of the Addison Gallery of Art - is a rare opportunity to see the vintage
photographs that radically changed photography and our relationship to it. -Elizabeth Kunreuther, Curator for the Center for Documentary Studies
That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music
comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that's what Robert Frank
has captured in the tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road
around practically forty-eight states in an old used car (on Guggenhiem
Fellowship) and with the agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange
secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before
on film. - Jack Kerouac, from his introduction to The Americans. In 1955, the
Swiss photographer Robert Frank traveled throughout the United States by
car and returned with a bleak portrait of what the American road had to offer.
As Kerouac writes in his introduction, Frank's photographs had "sucked a sad,
sweet, poem out of America," a sadness found in the forlorn looks of dime
store waitresses, funeral attendees, and human faces rendered
unrecognizable in the glare of jukeboxes. The slightly offset angles and the
blurred focus of many of the photographs suggest the n ervousness and
dislocation of the people they capture. Frank dispels any romantic notions of
the lingering pioneer spirit of America by presenting a landscape of people
and places absent of hope and promise. Though Swiss by birth, Frank
traveled the world before settling in the United States in 1953. He eventually
befriended the Beat poets (Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction to the book
The Americans) and became one of the key visual artists to document this
bohemian subculture in both photography and film, including the highly
influential cinematic work Pull My Daisy. Like the Beats, Frank sought to
reveal the profound tensions he saw in all strata of American society during
the outwardly optimistic 1950s. His photographic journey encompasses rich
and poor, black and white, north and south, offering a glimpse of what makes
these people and places truly American. In 1955, Robert Frank set out to
observe and photograph the United States. Supported by a grant from the
Guggenheim Foundation, he traveled across the country for two years. The
result was The Americans, a visionary work and a milestone in the history of
photography.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
City Fathers (Hoboken) 1955
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Trolley--New Orleans, 1955-56
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Political Rally, Chicago 1956
John Gutmann
Born in German in 1905, John Gutmann trained and exhibited as a painter. Fleeing Nazi
Germany in 1933, he immigrated to the United States. Before leaving Germany, he
bought a camera and arranged to sell photographs of America to be used in German
magazines. He turned to photography as a way of earning money during the Great
Depression in America when jobs were scarce.
Gutmann was fascinated with the new way of seeing the world that photography
provided. He thought of the camera as a human eye, which inspired him to photograph
whatever he saw, however he saw it. When he looked up in wonder at a multistory
parking garage (see Elevator Garage. Chicago, 1936), his camera looked up too.
John Gutmann
Elevator Garage. Garage. 1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© John Gutmann
He described the American city as "foreign—a landscape in which buildings had
replaced mountains, automobiles had replaced trees, and neon and painted signs had
been substituted for flowers." His pictures showed startling new views of familiar scenes.
American photographs were not always as daring and experimental with how they took
photographs at that time, so his work was though of as bold and modern. Gutmann
currently resides in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
John Gutmann
Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco, 1939
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© John Gutmann
Photographing primarily in the street, Gutmann used his eye and his camera to capture
the exuberance and rhythm of America. He found Americans exotic and optimistic
despite the Depression and looming war. His interest in photographing things uniquely
American inspired Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco in 1939. Jazz was an
American form of music popular for its modern sound. In this work, Gutmann has
captured the flare and style of a jazz performance by the High Hatters, with Count Basie
in the background. This scene was photographed during the World’s Fair in San
Francisco.
Gutmann photographed his subject from a worm’s-eye view. Notice, also, how the
framing of the image cuts or crops part of the singers from the view. At the time, this
approach to angle and framing was not widely used by American photographers, but
was a part of the new way of photographing that was being developed in Europe and
making its way to America. Such use was considered odd and daring.
Questions to consider:
* Where do you think Gutmann was standing when he took this photograph?
* What effect does the worm’s-eye view have?
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* What do you notice first when you look at this photograph? Why do you think you
noticed this first?
* What kinds of sounds would this scene produce?
* What adjectives would you use to describe this photograph?
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth were both born in Germany in 1909. They were fifteen
when they met in their homeland and began their lifelong involvement with writing and
photography. Both possessed a curiosity about the world and its people, and together
they left Germany to wander and work their way throughout Europe. Worried about the
economic problems of Europe and the rise of fascism in Germany, Hagel immigrated to
the United States in 1928. Having no money, he had to pay for his passage by working
on a freighter. Mieth followed him to San Francisco in 1930. They eventually married.
Together, they worked as laborers and migrant farm workers, turning to photography
and filmmaking whenever they could.
Hagel and Mieth were confronted with the harsh reality of the Depression in America in
the 1930s. Their first home in California was a tent. Mieth eventually began to
photograph for Time magazine, and both she and Hagel contributed a number of
photographs and photographic essays to Life magazine. Many times they collaborated
on a photograph. Both artists were interested in brining about a better understanding of
real life through their photographs. Their own difficult, working class backgrounds made
them sympathetic to the poor, the unemployed, and the labor unions. Hagel died in
1974. Mieth currently lives in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Hansel Mieth
Outstretched Hands, 1934
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Mieth and Hagel often photographed people who were struggling to make a living. In
this image, Hansel Mieth shows men vying for jobs at the San Francisco Waterfront in
1934.
To guide your students in a discussion, ask questions like:
* For what do you think these men are reaching?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how it makes you feel to know that these
men were unemployed and that they were reaching for job notices?
* What sounds would you expect to hear coming from this scene?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the overall feeling or mood of the
photograph?
* How does the framing add to this feeling?
* How does the angle add to this feeling?
* Have you ever felt desperate about anything in your life? How would you describe
that feeling?
* Do you think that this image communicates the desperation of these men to find
jobs?
Otto Hagel
The Window Washer, 1939
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Otto Hagel once worked as a window washer in New York City. When asked why he
was employed as such, he replied, "Well, with the economy going bad, I want to be able
to see what the giants of industry are doing by looking into their windows!" From this
response we know that he had quite a sense of humor. Hagel’s The Window Washer is
actually a self-portrait. Hagel set up the photograph from inside the room in order to
record himself washing a window of a tall building, high above the streets of New York
City. This is a complicated picture that can be discussed formally for the way it looks
and for what it communicates.
Questions to consider:
* Where was the camera located when this photograph was taken?
* What do you notice first in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* From what direction is the light coming? How can you tell?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are the shapes in this photograph primarily geometric or organic?
* Are there strong contrasts in this photograph?
* Does this photograph have enough variety to hold your interest?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feeling or mood of this work?
Lisette Model
Lisette Model was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1901. Music
was her passion and she studied voice and piano. With Hitler’s rise to power in
Germany, the safety of Jewish people was in question, even in Austria. Model moved
with her family to France in 1926. There, she took up photography so that she would
have a practical skill on which to rely. Photography became both her medium of artistic
expression and her main source of livelihood.
In 1938, Model immigrated to New York City with her husband, who was a painter. She
fell in love with the city’s noisy, narrow streets, tall buildings, fast pace, and energy.
Throughout the next ten years she mainly photographed subjects she found on the city
streets.
Her powerful, though nonconventional, images of New York were frequently seen in
Harper’s Bazaar. It was through her role as a teacher, however, that Model had the
greatest impact on young photographers. For the thirty years before her death in 1983,
she taught her students to open their eyes and respond to their subjects with their
hearts.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
Lisette Model
Window Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York City. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
This image is from Model’s series of photographs of store windows. Photographing this
subject matter allowed her to include information from both sides of the street all at once,
as the reflections showed activity both inside and outside of the windows. By aiming her
camera directly at a window, she captured the feel of the city in a jumble of reflections
and shadows. Framing the view of a photograph in this way was daring and is an
example of the experimental approach to art that European photographers brought to
this country.
Questions to consider:
* How do you know that this is a photograph of a city scene?
* Where was the artist when she took this picture? How can you tell?
* What do you notice first in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What is creating the shadow figures?
* Do you actually see any people in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are there strong contrasts of light and dark?
* What kinds of sounds would you hear if you were in this scene?
Marion Palfi
"I came to the United States in 1940 at a very tragic time in human history and (it might
sound corny) there was this man Roosevelt President, and he talked to the people on
the radio and told about the Four Freedoms and the better world of tomorrow. One day,
I told myself, perhaps I can help with my camera . . ." recalled Marion Palfi. Born in
Berlin of Hungarian and German parents in 1907, Palfi followed her father’s career into
German theater and films. By 1932, her attention had turned to photography.
After fleeing Hitler’s army, first in Germany and then in Holland, she settled in New York
City. As she traveled through various American cities, she was troubled by the racial
intolerance she witnessed there and by the growing problems in urban centers. Using
her camera as a tool to record her concerns, Palfi brought a European perspective to
social issues in the United States, especially those involving poverty, racism, and
injustice. She was disturbed by the unwillingness or inability of American society to
recognize and change them.
Palfi began to describe herself as a "social research photographer." She belonged to a
generation of artists who believed that art could and should effect social change. By
combining her art form with the study of society, Palfi explored and recorded groups that
remained invisible in America: the poor, the oppressed, and the victims of discrimination.
For the next thirty years she traveled across the country photographing these groups.
This intensive work resulted in the production of several large photographic essays,
passionate in their description of the disturbing things she witnessed. Palfi died in 1978.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Marion Palfi
Somewhere in the South, 1946-49
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
This photograph shows us a scene from a bus in the late 1940s. A black couple with a
baby sit, staring straight ahead, underneath the statement:THIS PART OF THE BUS
FOR THE COLORED RACE." It would be almost ten years before the laws requiring
blacks to sit in the back of the bus, while whites sat in the front, would be changed.
Questions to consider:
* How would you describe the looks on the faces of the bus riders? Discuss.
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* Why do you think Palfi chose to photograph her subjects so closely?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how this image makes you feel?
* Do you think that photographs can communicate strong feelings? How?
* Do you think that photographs can be used to promote social change? How?
Marion Palfi
Los Angeles, Anti Klan Meeting Where Klan
Did Strike, 1946-49 from Signs of Discrimination
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
Here, we see a group of people, black and white, that are attending a meeting
organized to fight against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Once, while photographing the KKK
and its activities, Palfi had to smuggle her negatives out of the South because her life
was threatened.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it
first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* How does the light contribute to the mood of the work?
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel if you were made to
sit in the back of a bus because of the color of your skin?
* How do you feel about the fact that, even though the U.S. Constitution declared that
no person could be discriminated against because of his or her race, the South had
laws that required blacks to sit apart from whites.
* What is the Ku Klux Klan?
* Is the KKK still active today?
* Why would white people join with blacks to fight the KKK?
Edward Steichen: The Family of Man
The Family of Man is an exhibition of photos mounted by Edward J. Steichen
in 1955 for the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). While offering
infinitely diverse images of human beings living in the 1950s, it nevertheless
emphatically reminds visitors that they all belong to the same big family. The
32 themes, arranged chronologically, reflect the subjects’ joys and sadnesses,
their satisfactions and their unhappinesses, and their longing for peace, but
also the reality of bloody conflict. They emphasize the role of democratic
structures and, in the exhibition’s conclusion, the United Nations’ role as the
only body capable of saving the world from the “scourge of war, which twice in
our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and [of reaffirming] faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in
the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (Charter of
the United Nations). Regarded as the “greatest photographic enterprise ever
undertaken”, it consists of 503 photographs taken by 273 photographers, both
professional and amateur, famous and unknown, from 68 countries. A huge
undertaking, with unique cultural and artistic dimensions, it had a considerable
influence on other exhibition organizers, stirred public interest in photography
and its tremendous ability to communicate, and conveyed a personal,
humanist message that was both courageous and provocative. The
photographers who took part included Dorothea Lange, Robert Capa, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Jack Delano, Margaret Bourke-White, Esther Bubley, Bert
Hardy, Edward Weston, Matthew Brady, Frank Scherschel, Wayne Miller, Eva
Arnold, Irving Penn, Consuelo Kanaga, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Bill Brandt, Russell
Lee, Carl Mydans, Ben Shahn and Marion Palfi.
Although the Family of Man has become a legend in the history of
photography, it went far beyond the traditional view of what an exhibition
should be. It may be regarded as the memory of an entire era, that of the Cold
War and McCarthyism, in which the hopes and aspirations of millions of men
and women throughout the world were focused on peace. Steichen’s
undertaking is still unique of its kind. Several photographic exhibitions were
more or less clearly inspired by it, for example The Family of Children and The
Family of Women by Jerry Mason, and the First World Photography Exhibition
organized by Karl Pawek in the 1960s for Stern magazine, but none of them
matched the visual dimension or the artistic coherence of the original
American exhibition. The very personal approach of Steichen arouses interest
and exercises minds to this day: There was a new surge of interest in the
exhibition following the opening of the Clervaux museum. Since June 1994
the museum has attracted over 163,000 visitors from all over the world, not
counting the 50,000 who went to see the restored collection in Toulouse,
Tokyo and Hiroshima in 1992 and in the winter of 1993-1994, 38 years after
the first tour. This was the final “round-the-world” trip by the exhibition before it
was permanently installed in the museum.
Visit the Virtual Tour of The Family of Man Exhibition (Links to an external site.)Links to
an external site.
Copyright © Ron Herman, 2007
Lecture 10: The Civil Rights
Movement
Required Reading
Raiford, Leigh. "The Consumption of Lynching Images ," pgs. 266-273 in Only Skin
Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, ed. Fusco, CoCo and Wallis, Brian. New
York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003.
Willis, Deborah. “Exposure ,” pgs. 274-281 in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of
the American Self, ed. Fusco, CoCo and Wallis, Brian. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
2003.
Lecture
•WARNING: This module contains graphic violent content and nudity•
Lynching is the practice whereby a mob--usually several dozen or several hundred
persons--takes the law into its own hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of
some wrongdoing. The alleged offense can range from a serious crime like theft or
murder to a mere violation of local customs and sensibilities. The issue of the victim's
guilt is usually secondary, since the mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and
executioner. Due process yields to momentary passions and expedient objectives.
Vigilantism, or summary justice, has a long history, but the term lynch law originated
during the American Revolution with Col. Charles Lynch and his Virginia associates,
who responded to unsettled times by making their own rules for confronting Tories and
criminal elements. "Lynching" found an easy acceptance as the nation expanded. Raw
frontier conditions encouraged swift punishment for real, imagined, or anticipated
criminal behavior. Historically, social control has been an essential aspect of mob rule.
Opponents of slavery in pre-Civil War America and cattle rustlers, gamblers, horse
thieves, and other "desperadoes" in the South and Old West were nineteenth-century
targets. From the 1880s onward, however, mob violence increasingly reflected white
America's contempt for various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. African-Americans
especially, and sometimes Native Americans, Latinos, Jews, Asian immigrants, and
European newcomers, felt the mob's fury. In an era when racist theories prompted "true
Americans" to assert their imagined superiority through imperialist ventures, mob
violence became the domestic means of asserting white dominance. Occasionally, this
complemented the profit motive, when the lynching of a successful black farmer or
immigrant merchant opened new economic opportunities for local whites and
simultaneously reaffirmed everyone's "place" in the social hierarchy. Sometimes
lynching was aimed at unpopular ideas: labor union organizers, political radicals, critics
of America's role in World War I, and civil rights advocates were targets.
African-Americans suffered grievously under lynch law. With the close of Reconstruction
in the late 1870s, southern whites were determined to end northern and black
participation in the region's affairs, and northerners exhibited a growing indifference
toward the civil rights of black Americans. Taking its cue from this intersectional white
harmony, the federal government abandoned its oversight of constitutional protections.
Southern and border states responded with the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s, and white
mobs flourished. With blacks barred from voting, public office, and jury service, officials
felt no obligation to respect minority interests or safeguard minority lives. In addition to
lynchings of individuals, dozens of race riots--with blacks as victims--scarred the
national landscape from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898 to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in
1921.
Between 1882 (when reliable statistics were first collected) and 1968 (when the classic
forms of lynching had disappeared), 4,743 persons died of lynching, 3,446 of them
black men and women. Mississippi (539 black victims, 42 white) led this grim parade of
death, followed by Georgia (492, 39), Texas (352, 141), Louisiana (335, 56), and
Alabama (299, 48). From 1882 to 1901, the annual number nationally usually exceeded
100; 1892 had a record 230 deaths (161 black, 69 white). Although lynchings declined
somewhat in the twentieth century, there were still 97 in 1908 (89 black, 8 white), 83 in
the racially troubled postwar year of 1919 (76, 7, plus some 25 race riots), 30 in 1926
(23, 7), and 28 in 1933 (24, 4).
Statistics do not tell the entire story, however. These were recorded lynchings; others
were never reported beyond the community involved. Furthermore, mobs used
especially sadistic tactics when blacks were the prime targets. By the 1890s lynchers
increasingly employed burning, torture, and dismemberment to prolong suffering and
excite a "festive atmosphere" among the killers and onlookers. White families brought
small children to watch, newspapers sometimes carried advance notices, railroad
agents sold excursion tickets to announced lynching sites, and mobs cut off black
victims' fingers, toes, ears, or genitalia as souvenirs. Nor was it necessarily the
handiwork of a local rabble; not infrequently, the mob was encouraged or led by people
prominent in the area's political and business circles. Lynching had become a ritual of
interracial social control and recreation rather than simply a punishment for crime.
See also: Walter White, Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929); Robert L. Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against
Lynching, 1909-1950 (1980).
Excerpted from a longer article in The Reader’s Companion to American History. Ed. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty. Copyright © 1991 by
Houghton Mifflin Co.
The lynching of Lige Daniels. August 3,
1920, Center, Texas.
(postcard, front and back)
A black teenager wearing a white shirt, ragged pants and no shoes stares blindly at the
sky. His head is tilted up towards the tree limb from which he has been hanged. His
name was Lige Daniels and he was lynched in Center, Texas on August 3, 1920. On
the basis of allegations that he had killed an elderly white woman, about a thousand
men battered down a jail door and hauled the youth off to an oak tree.
Lige Daniels hangs about six feet in the air. Beneath him are a mass of white men,
many looking at the camera and smiling. The camera catches one boy, possibly twelve
or thirteen years old, looking up at the lynched sixteen year-old. His smile and glee at
the scene are clear. It's probably the best fun he has had all that long, hot summer
vacation from school.
All of this was recorded for a postcard, complete with a 'Place Stamp Here' print on the
reverse side. As the scrawled message records, someone's Aunt Myrtle sent this card
off to distant family members for inspection, just to make sure that the local excitement
got properly reported.
Americans photographed these horrors of tortured, mutilated and burned bodies as an
advertisement for white supremacism and popular 'justice'.
Souvenir photos and postcards are a lost genre of American photography. The
thousands of recorded lynchings throughout the United States generated such profits as
penny postcards gave to small-town photographers. Only in the mid-twenties did the
Postmaster General ban such postcards from the mails. For years thereafter, though,
such photographs were available openly and then under the counter.
James Allen, who describes himself as a 'picker', spent years collecting lynching photos
from flea market and antiquarian dealers. He began collecting these images and the
result of Allen's efforts was an exhibition and book: Without Sanctuary: Lynching
Photography in America.
This volume, composed of the exhibition materials, documents as few other books the
virulence of white supremacism and its violences. Often there are two, three, four and
five black men hung together. Sometimes the photographed remains are no more than
the charcoaled trunk of a human being. For the 1899 lynching of Frank Embree in
Fayette, Missouri, the photographer-collaborator in the murder catches the naked
Embree in a last living stare at the camera; in a following plate, Embree hangs from a
tree. Often the hanging posse poses together with the victim. The 1909 murder of Will
James was carried out in front of a crowd of thousands gathered beneath a
cosmopolitan street arch with electric lights. His murderers first hung James from the
arch, then pumped his body full of bullets, and then had a 'coon barbecue'. Some
lynchers charged a nickel a shot to fire a pistol into a dead body. Hearts, ears and sex
organs were chopped out for display.
The book's graphic and unutterable images move a soul to both despair and
wonderment at human monstrosity. It is pornography in a true and most evil sense, yet
the despicable images are purest education against racism.
When the exhibition based on James Allen’s collection of lynching postcards, Without
Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America opened, and Twin Publishers released its
accompanying book, it re-ignited a dim fire under the horrors of lynching in the U.S., and
the disparate race, gender, and sexual relations that informed them. The history of
lynching and its historical precedents is well known and documented in historical
writing. Yet, the Allen collection of lynching photos stands out as distinct because its
collection primarily consists of postcards exchanged by living human beings in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On these postcards, commentary on the
backside spoke of general events and amusements curiously detached from the
heinous visual image on the front side. Postcards that did acknowledge the front image
expressed that the lynched body was an assumed thief, rapist, or simply stated that
there had been a “Negro barbecue” or “coon cooking” that evening. As one
correspondent jubilantly wrote to his father on the backside of a lynching postcard in
1916: “This is the barbecue we had last night; my picture is to the left with a cross over
it, your son Joe.”
Joe’s postcard documents the prevalent description of Black bodies as a process of
digestive consumption. Through the exchange of these images in the postal mail,
recipients of the postcards re-consumed them in the open, free market. Joe’s backside
commentary inscribes lynching postcards as commodities for exchange, which
documents the demise of another human being. In 1911, distribution of lynching
postcards through the postal mail became illegal. Nevertheless, this did not stop their
production, demand, or trade. To the contrary, the law facilitated an underground trade
market to emerge and flourish, where members of lynch mobs and willing spectators
continued to exchange proof of their assumed racial superiority and their
unquestionable power over the lives of Black Americans. As James Allen writes, the
exchange of lynching postcards in the nineteenth and twentieth century reveal “the lust
propelled by the commercial reproduction and distribution of the images,” which worked
to “facilitate the endless replay of anguish.” “Even dead,” writes Allen, “the victims were
without sanctuary.”
Without Sanctuary’s authors attest that while sexual transgression or sexual jealousy
was often the underpin of the ideology that justified lynching, the assumed offenses of
Black Americans that preceded their lynch-pin death also consisted of acts that broke
the unspoken racial code created in the dominant culture’s imagination. As Leon
Litwack, a historian of African American history and author of several articles and books
on lynching explains:
Many of the transgressions by Blacks would have been regarded as relatively trivial if
committed by whites and were not grounds anywhere else for capital punishment: using
disrespectful, insulting, boastful, threatening, or incendiary language; insubordination,
impertinence, or improper demeanor (a sarcastic grin, laughing at the wrong time, a
prolonged silence)…being troublesome…and (in the eye’s of whites) trying to act like a
white man.
The psychological and behavioral framework Litwack adds to the lynching story explains
the multiple reasons they occurred throughout history. Yet, in Litwack’s analysis of post
mortem lynch sites, he also adds description about the thoughtlessness that took place
after Black men and women were illegally disposed of through the lyncher’s tortuous
rope. Again, writes Litwack, “What ever their values as laborers, Black people were
clearly expendable and replaceable in the Antebellum era.” Expendable they were
indeed, and for the lynch mob, news of the lynched body and efforts to captivate the
proud acts via photography and to disseminate those images were immediate. For
example, in the lynching of Thomas Brooks, a Black man in Tennessee, the lynchers’
haste to trade evidence of their act was a chilling site of what one might consider
Bakhtinian carnivalesque:
Hundreds of Kodaks clicked all morning at the scene of Thomas Brooks’ lynching.
People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse
dangling from the end of a rope… Picture card photographers installed a portable
printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling postcards showing a
photograph of a lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a
number of country schools the day’s routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could
get back from viewing the lynched man.
Unidentified Man, 1908, Oxford Georgia
This image was placed on a postcard for Oxford, Georgia. The placement of the victim, in a train station
yard, under a lamp post, ensured that many would take notice of the lynch mob's work. That this image
was used to create a postcard displays the evaluative stance of all those involved, and all those who
subsequently used the post card. The image is well centered and well lit; much care was put into the
presentation of this photograph.
19 year old Elias Clayton, 19 year old Elmer Jackson, and 20 year old Isaac McGhie, 1919, Duluth,
Minnesota
Again, this image became a postcard. The lynched men were three of six circus workers accused of
attacking a white girl. The men were pulled from their jail cells and given a mob "trial." Three of the men
were released and three were murdered. Two men are pictured hanging in this photo; one victim lays at
their feet. It was later determined that none of men could have been involved in the attack.
The men pictured are all wearing business attire, ties, and overcoats, suggesting a white collar lynch
mob. The fourth man on the left has the beginnings of a smirk on his face as he prepares to memorialize
the event at hand. Several men can be seen leaning in to the photo as to assure their faces are seen.
There is no fear of retribution here. For such a posed photograph, the photographer must have been
aware that the victims' faces were all turned away from the camera. What is important -- the color of their
skin -- is visible.
Two unidentified males, 1910, Mississippi
This photograph is unique for a number of reasons. The lynch mob is not visible here, suggesting that
the photograph was taken the morning after the event. The white collar status of the white man pictured
is evident in his dress. As he steadies the bodies for the photograph, however, he hides his face from the
camera. While his participation in the photographing itself certainly seems to suggest little remorse, it is
possible that he does not wish to be photographed alone with the bodies. The mob itself generated huge
energy and prompted defiance of the law. It would be simple for any photographed member of the mob
to deny involved in the act itself. Denial would be much less simple for those photographed alone with
two dead bodies. The need to steady the bodies and create the ideal photograph displays the value of
the photos themselves to many Americans during the early1900s. One man's face is partially turned
towards the camera but there is little recognition here. He is one of a pair of victims hanging from a single
tree limb. There is no dignity or privacy allowed in lynch mob justice.
The photo was later converted to a poster to be used in anti-lynching campaigns.
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, Marion,
Indiana
Also evident in the photograph is a man
pointing towards one of the victims. The
These men were dragged out of the Grant Country
framed photo on the right contains hair from a
Courthouse; at least one was dead from the attack before victim as a "souvenir," as well as the written
he was hung from a tree in the courthouse square. Both
inscription, "Bo pointn to his Niga." As if
victims were attacked with bricks, rocks and other
there were any need to further suggest the
weapons. One man had a crow bar forced through his
objectification of the men, one of the crowd
chest several times.
evidently feels a sense of "ownership" over
the victim. The use of the frame, combined
Evident in the photograph at left are a number of women
with the inscription and the hair, suggest the
and middle class men. There is an elderly woman present value of this photograph. Like a photo taken
in the middle front of the crowd; an elderly man is along
to commemorate a picnic, family gathering, or
the right hand border. Those who were aware of the
special event, this photograph is carefully
photographer seem to be turned to pose for the
prepared and presented, assumingly for
shot. There is obviously some additional lighting coming
general viewing in a household.
from the top left hand side of the photo.
Frank Embree, July 22, 1899, Fayette, Missouri
The preceding three photographs depict the beating and
eventual handing of Frank Embree. The three
photographs were discovered laced together with purple
thread so that they could be unfolded to make a set.
The posing of both the perpetrators and the victim in
these three photographs is marked. The white man to
the left in the photo, grasping the carriage wheel,
presents a definitive air of self assurance and poise. In
the first photograph, the man to the right of the victim
shows an equal amount of poise and determination. No
less determined, however, is the set and seemingly
defiant face of the victim. It is unlikely that he was
unaware of his fate yet his expression denotes a
challenge rather than fear.
In the final photograph, the bravado of the perpetrators is
absent. No one seems to want to be seen with the dead
body. The only one who still faces the camera in
defiance -- the sole person who perhaps possesses no
true guilt -- is the victim.
Laura Nelson, May 25, 1911, Okemah, Oklahoma
Laura Nelson was hung along side her young son. Scores of onlookers, including women and children,
rest on the bridge above her. The lynching of women was rare, but not unheard of. Since lynched
victims were often accused of rape, black men were the prime targets of lynch mobs. Women and
children would suffer similar fates, however, if they were accused of serious crimes such as murder, they
were considered complicit with males in a crime, or the real target of the mob -- a brother, lover, friend,
etc., could not be found. A victim never, had little chance to escape a lynch mob, but women in particular
emphasize the vulnerability of the lynched victim. Nelson was allowed the dignity of remaining
clothed. Her son, visible in a much larger photograph, is shown hanging with his pants around his ankles,
ready to drop into the river below. It is possible that there was more shame implicit with hanging a
woman and child; their position over the river suggests an easy move from deathbed to grave, from crime
to cover-up..
e
William Brown, September 28, 1919, Omaha, Nebraska
William Brown was accused of molesting a white girl. The mob that mutilated and killed him also hung
and almost killed the mayor when he asked the mob to disperse. In order to seize Brown, the mob also lit
the courthouse on fire. Four others were killed and fifty were wounded in the riot that surrounded the
seizure and murder of Brown.
Evident in the photo is the careful placement of the photographer. The surrounding crowd provides the
border of the photograph. Men are shown smiling, posing, with their hands on their hips and their faces
fully visible. A young boy to the right is seen pushing through the crowd to get a better look. Suits and
ties are once again the norm of the crowd and for a single moment, the spastic riots that surrounded this
attack are calmed. After all, there is a photo to be taken.
View Website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: Without Sanctuary
Audio Clip (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: NPR on "Without
Sanctuary" Exhibition
STRANGE FRUIT
Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from the Bronx, was disturbed
by a photograph of a lynching and wrote a poem. He later set it to a brooding melody
under the pseudonym Lewis Allan in the late 1930s.
Best-known from Billie Holiday's haunting 1939 rendition, the song "Strange Fruit" is a
harrowing portrayal of the lynching of a black man in the American South.
"Strange Fruit" was first performed at a New York teachers' union meeting and was
brought to the attention of the manager of Cafe Society, a popular Greenwich Village
nightclub, who introduced Billie Holiday to the writer. Holiday's record label refused to
record the song but Holiday persisted and recorded it on a specialty label instead. The
song was quickly adopted as the anthem for the anti-lynching movement. The haunting
lyrics and melody made it impossible for white Americans and politicians to continue to
ignore the Southern campaign of racist terror. (Excerpt from the film “Strange
Fruit” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html_ (Links to an external
site.)Links to an external site.
Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.
Billie Holiday Sings "Strange Fruit"
KEN GONZALES-DAY
Ken Gonzales-Day is a contemporary photographer and writer who explores
lynching as subject matter in his work.
The centerpiece of Ken Gonzales-Day’s exhibition, a large black-and-white
photomural of a lynching, depicts a crowd of men in Depression-era suits and
hats around a bare tree. But the object of their attention is missing: The artist
has digitally removed the victim from the picture. Small, vintage-looking
images, grouped together on an adjacent wall, show similar clusters of people
around empty trees or poles; among them are several that portray the same
crowd—or parts of it—as the photomural. In the postcard-sized Tucson, a
group of steely-eyed men form a V at the base of a telegraph pole and stare
directly at the viewer, though whether their gaze is conspiratorial or
confrontational is hard to gauge.The titles of two large color photographs of
trees—Golden Chain, bathed in a late afternoon glow, and At Daylight the
Miserable Man Was Carried to an Oak, its subject carpeted by moss—
suggest that bodies might have once dangled from their branches.
Gonzales-Day’s work centers on lynching in the American West, particularly
California, where more Latinos, Indians, Chinese and even whites were
murdered than blacks. But by erasing the bodies of the lynched victims,
inflating the crowd in the mural with a composite of several photos and giving
images titles to which they may not be connected (Tucson, for example,
actually depicts the town of Tombstone, Arizona), the artist renders his
“evidence” unreliable and challenges conventional ideas about history,
photography and representation itself. Instead of shock, sympathy or
identification, we feel a vague unease, without emotional or intellectual
resolution. — Joseph R. Wolin
( http://www.timeoutny.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TONYWe
bArticles1/576/art/ken_gonzales_day.xml)
In the process of researching a book called ''Lynching in the West: 18501935,'' the Los Angeles artist Ken Gonzales-Day assembled an archive and
made a discovery: in the more than 350 California lynchings he found records
for, most of the victims were Latinos. His photographic show at Cue Art
Foundation is an interpretive response to that. Some of the photographs are
his own, taken of still-standing trees where lynchings took place. Most of the
other pictures are reproductions of historical images, found in newspapers
and on souvenir postcards, of actual lynchings. In each of these pictures,
though, the artist has erased the body of the victim, leaving everything else
intact. The tree or telegraph post used for the hanging is there; so is the crowd
of witnesses and executioners, posing for the camera or staring up at what is
now empty space. As the artist Kerry James Marshall demonstrated in
paintings using lynching photographs and a comparable mode of selective
erasure, the effect is very different from looking at the horrific unaltered
pictures, where the victims continue to be exposed and shamed as objects of
casual spectatorship, exactly as their killers intended. Mr. Gonzales-Day's
work throws the emphasis on the spectators themselves and makes hard lines
between then and now, them and us, difficult to draw. HOLLAND COTTER
( http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E4DF1E31F931A1575A
C0A9609C8B63)
Ken Gonzales-Day
Erased Lynching (1884) 2004
lightjet print
5.5 x 3.5 in.
Ken Gonzales-Day
Run Up, 2003
LightJet Printt
Ken Gonzales-Day Website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 1 of 3
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 1 of 3 (Links to an external site.)Links
to an external site.
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 2 of 3
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 2 of 3 (Links to an external site.)Links
to an external site.
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 3 of 3
University of Rhode Island Lynching Exhibit - part 3 of 3 (Links to an external site.)Links to an
external site.
EMMETT TILL AND THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT SPARKED THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
Emmett and Mamie Till 1954
Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American
teenager from Chicago, Illinois who was brutally murdered in a region of Mississippi
known as the Mississippi Delta in the small town of Money in Leflore County. His
murder was one of the key events that energized the nascent American Civil Rights
Movement. The main suspects for the crime--both caucasian men--were acquitted, but
later admitted to committing the crime. Till's mother had an open casket funeral to let
everyone see how her son had been brutally killed. He had been shot and beaten; he
was then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan tied
to his neck with barbed wire to work as a weight. His body remained in the river for
three days until it was discovered and retrieved by two fishermen.
After Till's severely damaged body was found, he was put into a pine box and nearly
buried, but Mamie Till Bradley wanted the body to come back to Chicago. A Tutwiler
mortuary assistant worked all night to prepare the body as best he could so that Mamie
Till Bradley could bring Emmett's body back to Chicago.
The Chicago funeral home had agreed not to open the casket, but Mamie Bradley
fought it, and after the state of Mississippi would not allow the funeral home to open it,
Mamie threatened to open it herself, insisting she had a right to see her son. After
viewing the body, she also insisted on leaving the casket open for the funeral and
allowing people to take photos because she wanted people to see how badly Till's body
had been disfigured. News photographs of Till's mutilated corpse circulated around the
country, notably appearing in Jet magazine, drawing intense public reaction. Some
reports indicate up to 50,000 people viewed the body. 1 in 5 fainted at the sight.
This gruesome photo of Emmett Till helped spark the civil rights movement. It
demonstrated the brutality of southern violence towards African-Americans, and created
outrage across the nation. Emmett's mother, Mamie, insisted at his funeral that he be
given an open-casket, so others could see what they had done to her boy.
Photograph of Till's Body and His mother's Reaction
In 1955, Jet magazine published photographs of the mutilated body of 14-year-old
Chicago resident Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in Mississippi. Many civil
rights activists say seeing those pictures both haunted and inspired them. NPR's Noah
Adams reports on the decision to publish the photos and the wide-ranging effect they
had.
Margaret Block, a long-time activist in Cleveland, Miss., was a young girl when the
pictures were published. "I remember not being able to sleep when I saw [the photos],"
she says. "Can you imagine being 11 years old and seeing something like that for the
first time in your life and it being close to home? The death of Emmett Till touched us, it
touched everybody. And we always said if we ever got a chance to do something, we
were going to change things around here."
For Charles Cobb, a Washington, D.C., journalist and author, the photos were also a
catalyst to activism. Cobb first saw the pictures when he was 12 years old. He went on
to develop the "Freedom Schools" that mobilized black voters throughout Mississippi in
1964.
NPR: Morning Edition: Emmett Till and the Impact of Images (Links to an external
site.)Links to an external site.
Listen to this audio program and hear how Jet magazine’s decision to publish photos of
the murdered boy helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.
On September 23 the jury, made up of 12 white males, acquitted both defendants.
Deliberations took just 67 minutes; one juror said they took a "soda break" to stretch the
time to over an hour. The hasty acquittal outraged people throughout the United States
and Europe, and energized the nascent Civil Rights Movement. In a January 1956
article in Look Magazine (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. for which
they were paid, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant admitted to journalist William Bradford Huie
that he and his brother had killed Till. They did not fear being tried again for the same
crime because of the Constitutional double jeopardy protection.
The Death of Emmett Till, Bob Dylan
"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the
street.
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse
to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
Bob Dylan's "The Death of Emmett Till" With Images of Emmett Till
Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil
rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called "Mother of the Modern-Day
Civil Rights Movement".
On December 1, 1955, Parks became famous for refusing to obey bus driver
James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.
This action of civil disobedience started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is
one of the largest movements against racial segregation. In addition, this
launched Martin Luther King, Jr., who was involved with the boycott, to
prominence in the civil rights movement. She has had a lasting legacy worldwide.
Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery's
public transportation system was legally integrated. Behind Parks is Nicholas C.
Chriss, a UPI reporter covering the event.
Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beginning with the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, photography and photographers
played an important role in advancing the American Civil Rights Movement by
documenting the public and private acts of racial discrimination against African
Americans. This article focuses on these photographers and the role that they played in
the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South.
View Website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: Chronology
of the Civil Rights Movement
View Website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: Voices of
Civil Rights Exhibition
Notable photographers and the roles they played
Ernest Withers
(American b. 1922)
Ernest Withers holds a unique place in mid-20th-century American
photography. Working as a self-employed photographer in the American
South, Withers was in a unique position to record the making of history.
Withers could be called the original photographer for the Civil Rights
Movement. Documenting the Movement from the 1950s through the 1960s
Withers produced a book on the Emmett Till murder that became a motivating
influence for the push towards equal rights. In the 1950s he photographed
players of the Diamond League including such icons as Jackie Robinson and
Willie Mays. Based on legendary Beale Street in Memphis, Withers
photographed the early performances of such celebrities as Elvis Presley, B.B.
King, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.
Ernest Withers
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Abernathy on the First Desegregated Bus, Montgomery,
Dec. 21, 1956 Gelatin silver print 15 x 18 inches
Withers shares his experiences and images of events that altered the course of
American history in a memorable Martin Luther King Jr. Day presentation at the
Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Video Clip (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.: The Civil Rights
Movement On Film: Ernest C. Withers, photojournalist
View Website: (Links to an external site.)Links to an external
site. Photographs by Civil Rights Photographer Ernest Withers
Elizabeth Eckford And the Little Rock Nine
Little Rock Nine
Hazel Massery (born Hazel Bryan) was a student at Little Rock Central High School
during the 1950s. She was depicted in an iconic photograph that showed her shouting
at Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, during the integration crisis. In her
later life, she would work with Eckford to further the goals of racial harmony.
In 1998, Massery told The Guardian, "I am not sure at that age what I thought, but
probably I overheard that my father was opposed to integration.... But I don't think I was
old enough to have any convictions of my own yet." Later in life she changed her mind;
she had thought of Martin Luther King as a "trouble-maker", but realized "deep down in
your soul, he was right". She took the initiative of contacting Eckford, leading to an
"awkward" first meeting, but then a real friendship. Both women faced angry feelings
from friends and relatives in Little Rock, which remains largely physically segregated.[2]
She appeared with Eckford and the rest of the Little Rock Nine on The Oprah Winfrey
Show, and at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of integration at Central High. The
reunion provided an opportunity for acts of reconciliation, as noted in this editorial from
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on the first day of 1998:
"One of the fascinating stories to come out of the reunion was the apology that Hazel
Bryan Massery made to Elizabeth Eckford for a terrible moment caught forever by the
camera. That 40-year-old picture of hate assailing grace — which had gnawed at Ms.
Massery for decades — can now be wiped clean, and replaced by a snapshot of two
friends. The apology came from the real Hazel Bryan Massery, the decent woman who
had been hidden all those years by a fleeting image. And the graceful acceptance of
that apology was but another act of dignity in the life of Elizabeth Eckford."[3]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Massery)
Hazel Bryan (center, in front of man with hat) shouts at Elizabeth Eckford as she walks
to school in 1957. This photograph, taken by Will Counts, is one of the top 100
photographs of the 20th century, according to the Associated Press.[1]
It was the fourth school year since segregation had been outlawed by the Supreme
Court. Things were not going well, and some southerners accused the national press of
distorting matters. This picture, however, gave irrefutable testimony, as Elizabeth
Eckford strides through a gantlet of white students, including Hazel Bryant (mouth open
the widest), on her way to Little Rock’s Central High.
* Dan Budnik, in 1965, Budnik persuaded Life to have him create a long-term photo
essay documenting the Selma to Montgomery march. His photographs are now in the
collection of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.
View Website: Dan Budnik (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
* Bruce Davidson chronicled the events and effects of Civil Rights Movement, in both
the North and the South, from 1961 to 1965. In support of his project, Davidson
received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 and his finished project was displayed at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Upon the completion of his documentation of
the Civil Rights Movement, Davidson received the first ever photography grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Bruce Davidson,
Bruce Davidson, New York, 1964
Bruce Davidson, Youths on the Selma March
* Warren K. Leffler was a photographer for U.S. News & World Report during the civil
rights years. Although based primarily in Washington, D.C., Leffler also traveled to the
South to cover many of the main events for the magazine.
* Danny Lyon published his first photographs working for the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. His pictures appeared in The Movement, a documentary book
about the Southern Civil Rights Movement.
Danny Lyon (b. 1942)
Drinking Fountains in the Dougherty County Courthouse, Albany, Georgia, ca. 1963
* James "Spider" Martin's photographs documented the March 1965 beating of
marchers in the Selma to Montgomery march, known as “Bloody Sunday.” About the
effect of photography on the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Spider,
we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren't for guys like
you, it would have been for nothing. The whole world saw your pictures. That's why the
Voting Rights Act was passed." [1]
View James "Spider" Martin Gallery HERE (Links to an external site.)Links to an
external...
Purchase answer to see full
attachment