Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA PhotographsWorking for the government's Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, photographers set out across the country to capture the human face of the Depression. Walker Evans' portraits of sharecroppers and Dorothea Lange's images of migrant families today stand as the most popular images from the FSA's project. Yet, in their own time, the pictures functioned as urgent, powerful reminders that one-third of the nation was in a real crisis. Focusing on these and other well-known FSA photographs, Finnegan examines how popular magazines constructed complex and often contradictory messages about poverty. Picturing Poverty also explores a moment in American history when visual images took center stage as the nation struggled with economic, political, and social strife. By striving to understand the original context of the photographs, Finnegan shines new light on the meanings of poverty, the Depression, and the various roles of the media. At once a persuasive analysis of FSA images and a balanced commentary on the role of the media, Picturing Poverty is above all a look into the difficult issue of how the mass media presents social issues to Americans. |
Contents
ONE Imaging Poverty in the Historical Section 36 | 13 |
TWO Social Engineering and Photographic | 10 |
Rhetorical Circulation and | |
Copyright | |
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aesthetic agricultural American annual appear argued Arthur Rothstein Ben Shahn California camps caption charity circulation context cropping Depression discourse documentary Dorothea Lange dust bowl early editors Edward Steichen Elmer Thomas Embree Embree's essay experience face Farm Security Administration farm tenancy farmers feature federal Figure focus frame FSA images FSA photographs Grapes of Wrath graphs Historical Section photographs Ibid individual interest issues John Steinbeck journal labor land Lange's Library of Congress Loeb Kellogg Look Look's Luce Maloney Migrant Mother Mike Cowles narrative nude Paul Kellogg picture magazines picture story political poor portrait print culture problems production published RA's readers reel Resettlement Administration rhetoric of poverty Roy Stryker rural poverty Russell Lee Shahn sharecroppers social Steichen Steinbeck's suggests Survey Graphic tenancy story thirties tion tographs Tugwell U.S. Camera University Press viewer visual Walker Evans workers York