> From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of > Stan Halpin
> > An interesting article here for those comrades who are interested in > the > > history of social documentary and reportage photography: > > <http://www.foto8.com/new/online/blog/1424-worker-photography- > movement> > > > > B > > > > OK, a couple of glasses of wine later, I have read through the whole > interview. Though I'll admit to skimming some portions. > I am still not wild about the pretentious tone of the interviewee, but > he is after all a museum curator so it may go with the territory. > > Muttering about style aside, I did find this quite an interesting look > at a somewhat coherent photographic movement aiming to illustrate the > class struggle articulated mostly by Communist thinkers. > "...groups of amateur worker-photographers were exhorted to lay bare, > in a 'hard and merciless light', the iniquities and social ills of > capitalism..." > I am sorry he took a somewhat dismissive stance with respect to the > U.S. depression-era works: > > >> "... the Lewis Hine-FSA-Life magazine paradigm, which involves a > reformist social-democrat narrative > >> of the role of documentary as a paternalistic depiction of the > working class and the dispossessed." > > I cannot see how Dorothea Lange's photos are substantively different > from those that illustrate the story, but I guess the point is not the > images themselves, but rather the way in which the photographers and > editors used those photos in shaping a social narrative. > I think the main difference is that the workers are photographing themselves and their own situation, rather than being the passive subjects of someone else's regard. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
