Photographic Realism

Image by Margaret Bourke-White

James Goodwin’s article regarding black and white photos of the Depression era truly made me reconsider the way I viewed those very same images. As I looked through some of the photo books the first time around, I found some of the pictures strikingly beautiful. Almost immediately, however, I felt guilty for thinking so. These pictures depict the hardship and struggles of an entire class of Americans, yet I was looking at them as purely art for art’s sake. Goodwin’s article helped me put that naïve way of thinking aside and discover some of the deeper motifs and techniques being employed.

One seemingly obvious motif that runs across many of the works is that of the juxtaposition of middle class luxuries with working class adversity. Goodwin cites “Belmont, Florida 1936” by Margaret Bourke-White, however I feel another of her pieces better reflects the theme, her image of a long line of men and women, the majority of whom are black, standing in front of a large billboard depicting a happy white family in their car. The ad says, “World’s Highest Standard of Living; There’s No Way like the American Way.” The irony in this photograph is almost too painful to bear. Here are these poor, miserable people lined up presumably for food given the baskets they are holding standing directly in front a reminder of how hard their lives are. The people in this line will probably never reach that “Standard of Living” advertised. Bourke-White seemingly composed this picture to make her viewers rethink the way different people in America are eligible for very different opportunities and ways of life. As Goodwin writes: “Several photographers exerted editorial direction by embedding discursive contexts within their images. Ready at hand for this purpose were…billboards…and in icons of material life such as the automobile” (Goodwin, 274).

Goodwin also refers to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as an example of how photography properly represents automobile life in a way the written word offer got wrong. He writes, “Even when a migrant family is shown to possess an automobile, its members still display a haggard, vacant, and futureless aspect. Their expressions are a sign of social disrepair” (Goodwin, 276). The Joad family grows to cherish their make-shift truck as their new home and center of family life. Goodwin points out that Dorothea Lange’s images of migrant families in their cars more accurately displays the realities of a nomadic lifestyle. It does make sense that photographs would better capture life’s day-to-day authenticity; however, photographers still have artistic control over the images they produce. If a photo is staged, as in many ways a work of fiction is staged, then is it really truthful at all?