A Picture Worth One Thousand Words

.One might expect all Depression era photo-documentary work to be similar, however the juxtaposition of the various texts and images presented by Agee, Evans, Lange, Taylor, Caldwell, Bourke-White etc prove otherwise. It is also interesting to note how the images and texts paired together in each piece complement each other.

Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor's American Exodus, combines the observations of a social scientist and those of a photographer to produce a work that is poetic, yet not to the extent that one might expect. Lange's photographs, poignant and beautifully composed, fall into place alongside Taylor's lyrical, yet matter-of-fact prose. Taylor's explanation of his opinion concerning statistics is the perfect explanation of the book's style. Lange and Taylor certainly make no effort to romanticize or dramaticize the lives of migrant workers and farmers during the 1930's and 40's, however Taylor's text is not clinical. It does not focus on numbers and statistics, but rather on the individuals affected by the Depression. As Taylor points out, he was criticized for this, however it is clear his effort was not intended to give readers a statistical overview of the Depression era, now to make any generalizations. Both Lange and Taylor realize the importance of the fact that the artist and writer not misrepresent their subjects and that they must represent only their subjects. That said, their work does provide truths about the time, but it also provides the reader with a story and a face to humanize the experience.

I found Caldwell and Bourke-White's You Have Seen Their Faces to be quite a different experience than Lange and Taylor's work. I did appreciate the foreword and the exploration of the idea of the book in which photographs and text are equally important, especially the quote of one critic, "The roles of text and illustration are completely reversed...the pictures state the theme of the book, whereas the prose serves as illustrative material" (V, Caldwell, Bourke-White). However, I felt that this was the case more in Lange and Taylor's work than in Caldwell and Bourke-White's. Though the latter duo provided striking images, that provoke emotion and contemplation, the text was rather dry, and though it explained the reasons for the plight of the people portrayed, it did not provide the same poetic sense of tragedy that Taylor was able to. That being said, Caldwell's text provides the reader with important background information that it is difficult to garner from Taylor's work.

In reading these pieces and viewing the photographs, the intricacies of representation keep coming to mind. A photograph may speak a thousand words, but just as the writer can express whatever he wants with his pen, so may the photographer manipulate her art form. But we have no way of knowing whether Dorothea Lange or any o the other photographer's candids were actually candids. Also, even if the subjects weren't coached or manipulated at all, the mere angle of the camera, the light of the time of day at which the photo is taken, can so completely change the message of the photograph. Were Depression era photographers purposefully and artfully constructing their pictures? I would say it is even more likely that they were aware of, if not in charge of every detail in a photograph, simply because photography was a much slower process at the time. Photographers could not simply click away as they do today, hoping that one in a hundred frames will provide them with the message they are hoping to send.