Photographs in Context I

One way to weigh a photograph’s rhetorical impact is by reference to the situation in which it was created and rose to prominence. This week and next, we will be reading two essays that examine the work of photographers during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The first focuses on Dorothea Lange’s creation of “Migrant Mother”; the second (coming next week) will focus on photographs published in Life Magazine. Both essays are inspiring examples of historical analysis; both also have something to teach us about the complex interrelationship of photographer to subject, and photograph to audience.

Reading James Curtis, “Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression,” a 1986 essay published in Winterthur Portfolio. In preparation for discussion, please respond in writing as follows:

1. Curtis’ most startling revelation is that Lange posed her subjects carefully. Make a list of the ways that Lange altered and edited her subjects in the process of creating her masterpiece. Why does this seem to diminish our sense of her work’s meaning? Should it?
2. Is the later history of Florence Thompson relevant to our understanding of Lange’s photograph? Was the photograph diminished or enhanced by the loss of anonymity?

3-¶ Initial Description and Analysis

For class Flesh out two-column notes listing and accounting for details from one of the photographs linked from the homepage of the coursedocs website. If you focus on the same photo as you discussed in the last class session, feel free to use your prior list of details as a starting point.

Aim to collect AT LEAST 20 distinct details. I know that sounds like a lot, but don’t forget that, besides stuff in the photo, you can note details OF the photo: focus, framing, color, exposure. Finally, consider details left out of the photo: what we don’t see but are made to wonder about (as, for example, the father missing from “Migrant Mother”).

Once you have your list, re-order it so as to group related details under headings. Then, in the right hand column, say something about why that heading matters, how that group of details contributes to the photo’s message and/or impact. As we discussed in lecture, grouping details together is known as “strand analysis,” in the sense that you’re identifying and naming the strand that links those details together. For example, in “Migrant Mother” one might group the children’s threadbare clothing, the family’s tent, and the baby’s dirty face under the heading “grinding poverty.”

In lecture, I also mentioned Binary Analysis. We will talk more about Binaries in an upcoming class, but to briefly clarify a somewhat rushed point, a Binary consists of a pair of related but contrasting Strands. In “Migrant Mother,” details from the children might be gathered together under the heading of Vulnerability and details from the mother under the heading of Strength. Thus, rather than discussing both mother and kids together as elements of a single strand, “Responsibility,” we might choose instead to discuss the mother’s Strength and the children’s Vulnerability as separate strands that combine in the binary, “Responsibility.”

Many of the photographs lend themselves to binary analysis. Perhaps most obviously: Tank Man, Segregated Water Fountains, the Lynching in Marion Indiana. So the HW below prompts you to try out both.

To post below Using your two-column notes as a starting point, write a three-¶ sequence as follows:

1. ¶ giving a vivid initial description of the photograph. Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of the photograph’s message.
2. ¶ focusing on one strand of details (or perhaps two closely related strands). Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of how that strand contributes to the photo’s rhetorical impact on viewers.
3. ¶ focusing on a strand of details that stands in contrast to the prior ¶’s focus, thus forming the second half of a binary. Open the ¶ with a one-sentence assessment of how this new strand complicates the photograph’s message.

Susan Sontag: “In Plato’s Cave”

On Photography is a collection of essays written by Susan Sontag in the 1970s and originally published in the New York Review of Books. Sontag is a provocative writer, engaging our attention with startling and often counterintuitive claims about the function of photographic imagery in our society. She writes as a public intellectual rather than as an academic—you’ll note the absence of footnotes or other source citation. Some of her analysis may seem outdated in the digital era, but other points will strike you as truer now than ever before.

For class please read and take three-column notes on “In Plato’s Cave,” the first of the essays collected in On Photography. As we did when you watched The Persuaders for Unit Two, start by writing down quotations in the left-hand column. Then rewrite those quotes in your own words in the middle column, focusing on expressing the author’s ideas in ways amenable to you. Finally, use the right-hand column to record your reaction to her idea—in particular, any plans for applying Sontag to the photographs selected for this unit. As with The Persuaders, don’t be too eager to fill up that right-hand column—leave space for later thoughts and blanks where she has a cool idea but you’re not sure what to do with it.

Our goal in reading Sontag is to gain a vocabulary for talking about photography’s power to inspire an emotional reaction in viewers—as well as its limitations. So be sure to take note of her vital, provocative claims: not just places where you agree with her, but also places where you disagree. Later on, you may want to return to those points of controversy and consider making that issue a focal point for your essay.

To post below Go through the images on the front page of the CourseDocs site and make a tentative choice of a photograph to focus on for this unit. Take 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with the photo.

Make a list of 20 key details (a start on creating two-column notes). Then pick out the two most important facts about the image and use them to craft a 1 or 2 sentence summary of the image’s rhetorical message. Your sentence should express how the photo’s message arises from the relationship between those two really important details.

For example, looking at the image from the last lecture, I might write, “The mother’s worried expression as her children huddle around forces viewers to sympathize with the plight of migrant farmworkers during the Great Depression” (key details set in boldface type). You’ll note that this isn’t a thesis claim so much as a preliminary understanding.

Paste your sentence into the comment box below.

The Silent Eloquence of Photography

Read this passage from William Stott on the visibility of poverty during the Great Depression, as well as this passage from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

For Class Take a minute to look at the image at right. Have you seen it before? What does it say to you? What are the three most vital details in conveying this message? Bring your answers to class — or paste into the comment space below.

Note: the image at right is a high-res scan of the original photo; if you click it, you’ll get a larger version that zooms in pretty far.

In Class Strand analysis. Two-column notes redux.

Essay Due

Turn in your essay (1) as an uploaded file in the comments and (2) by adding a new page to your ePortfolio. The full essay isn’t due until midnight, but you must prep a short passage from your essay in time to present it during today’s class. If you don’t have your full essay ready in time for class, add the essay later as a “reply” to the comment where you posted the excerpt.

1. Please use a standard Word format for your essay (.doc or .docx) and rename the file file prior to uploading, using your first and last names: For example, “Brody Brown.docx”
2. Choose your favorite passage from the essay and paste it into a comment. We’ll be reading these in class, so take time to rehearse!
3. Use the upload file option to include your essay file in your comment—or add a second comment that includes your essay file as a reply to your first comment.

1. Add a new page to the Rhetoric section of your ePortfolio with the title, “Unit Two: the Rhetoric of Advertising.”
2. Paste your essay into a Rich Text module on this new page.
3. You might want to include your ad along with your essay—either as media inserted in the Rich Text module OR as a separate Media module.

Introduction Due

Think of the intro as an effort to sell your essay to the reader. What does it offer that a typical reader might find valuable?

The first sentences of an essay should grab the reader. Sometimes authors will try to grab our attention with a joke, but generally the goal is to (1) specify the essay’s topic and (2) make clear why that topic should be of interest to us. A good option is to begin by introducing the ad you’re writing about. In considering what to say, think about what makes this ad unusual and therefore intriguing—or alternatively what makes it typical and therefore indicative of a broader trend.

Having introduced your essay’s topic, the second half of the intro should focus our attention on what you want to argue about that topic—your thesis. But before you tell us your core insight, you may want to prep us with some preliminary understanding of the topic—what your essay is adopting as its starting point. This is sometimes called the “counter-thesis,” in the sense that it is what you’re arguing against in arguing your thesis claim. It will turn out to be incomplete, partial, preliminary, but the preliminary understanding thinks it is a full and complete explanation for the essay’s topic.

In any event, the last sentences of a good intro should voice the essay’s main claim or thesis. Wording is crucial: a good thesis will immediately intrigue the reader by striking us as (1) not obviously true and (2) having significant implications for a topic that we care about. A strong preliminary understanding will help establish the first of these; a strong initial characterization of your topic will help establish the second. But everything depends on the wording of the thesis in making strike the reader as intriguing, compelling, perhaps even paradoxical.

For Class Write an introduction to the essay you’re planning and turn it in by pasting it into the comments.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

As you gear up for writing your first essay, you should consider what makes your ad “newsworthy.” Assuming a reader who’s already interested in modern-day advertising, why is this ad of particular interest? How does it challenge or complicate what we already know about advertising from watching The Persuaders?

To help model this practice, I want you to consider the following ads, all of them cited early in the second segment of The Persuaders, titled “Emotional Branding”:

• Life Buoy soap
• Infiniti
• Nike “I can have impossible goals”
• Benneton
• Chinet paper plates
• Saturn “Homecoming”
• Apple iPod silhouette posters & ads

For each ad in this list, take note of

1. What important insight this example offers, according to the documentary’s narrator or one of its experts;
2. What prior understanding of the topic helped make this example interesting.

Bring your notes to class for discussion—and as HW to turn in.

Further Reading Download and read Thomas Frank, “The Marriage of Hip and Square,” an excerpt from the first chapter of his book, The Conquest of Cool, that ran fifteen years ago in Harper’s Magazine. As you read, consider the function of Frank’s central example, the advertising guru Bill Bernbach. What important insight does Bernbach offer? What prior understanding of the topic makes Bernbach interesting?

Problematizing Analysis: Discovering a Flaw in One’s Initial Account

Students generally try to write from a place of certainty at all times. But good writers develop their ideas, adopting initial understandings that are necessarily partial in order to leave room for growth. This allows them to guide their readers through simple stages into a complex understanding of a topic. Today I’m asking you to practice that by presenting an initial understanding and then casting that into doubt.

Taking your HW from class 8 as a starting point, write a first ¶ that summarizes your initial account of your ad’s appeal or sales pitch. Then complicate that understanding by deliberately casting it into doubt. Here’s a schematic outline of what I’m looking for:

1. ¶ summarizing the ad’s appeal or sales pitch—feel free to rewrite or reuse a ¶ from the HW for Class 8
2. ¶ introducing a problem or doubt about the account you just offered in ¶1. You should then go on to resolve that problem by achieving a new understanding of how the ad works, who it appeals to.
   • If you can present the “problem” in one sentence, you can do the problem and resolution in a single ¶.
   • On the other hand, if it takes several sentences to make the reader appreciate the problem, you’ll want to present your resolution as a separate paragraph.

The drama of this sequence will be enhanced if the first ¶ ends with attention focused on a aspect of the ad’s appeal that the next ¶ calls into question. For example, an essay on the “Slim Jim: Intensive Care” ad we saw for lecture might employ the following transition from ¶1 to ¶2:

… by these vigorous young interns. In this way, the ad invites potential customers to see themselves in the roles of the hospital’s patients, victims who are being rescued from emasculating women by the magic of bromance, mediated by a stick of meat.

This appeal seems stranger the longer one thinks about it—not just for employing a homoerotic undertone in a frat-boy context, but for inviting customers to think of themselves as losers….

The other question to consider in this example is whether the sentence opening ¶2 is in itself enough to make the problem manifest for readers. If so, one would finish that ¶ with analysis that grapples with the problem to achieve a deeper understanding of the ad’s method of appealing to viewers. On the other hand, one must often take a whole ¶ to flesh out a problem for readers, in which case the problem’s solution would have to come in a separate, third ¶.

Turn your ¶s in via the comment section, below.

The Persuaders

Watch Douglas Rushkoff’s Frontline documentary, The Persuaders. If you have the time to do it right, the best method would be to watch the movie through once, and then go back a day later and watch it a second time—after all, it’s easier to know what’s important on a second viewing.

Initial Reaction In the comments space below, write briefly about the most compelling moment from the documentary. If possible, call attention to an advertising keyterm referenced in that scene.

Three Column Notes (bring to class) I’ll be looking for a left-hand column full of direct quotations and keyterms, together with the NAME of the person speaking and the TIME signature in the video.

Fill the middle column filled with your paraphrase (your words only!) of ideas and concepts drawn from quotations and keyterms in the left-hand column.

In your right-hand column, I’ll be looking for insights and applications of those keyterms to ads you’ve encountered. Specify the ad and how your understanding of the ad is deepened or altered.

Looking Ahead

Introduce problematizing analysis: new discovery motivates reassessment and further writing

Binary Analysis as a Tool of Advertising

Reading HW
Download and read Mark Crispin Miller, “Getting Dirty,” a chapter from his 1988 monograph Boxed In. Pay particular attention to his vivid account of the advertisement he discusses—a description that takes up the first few pages of his essay. (If you’re curious to see the ad he discusses in that essay, I’ve uploaded it to YouTube.)

For class, be prepared to discuss the following: What do you like about Miller’s account? What’s his strong suit as a writer? What are his weaknesses, if any?

Viewing HW
Watch all of the following ads, looking for patterns: nothing fancy here, just what do you see happen over and over in this four decade long sequence of soap ads. Make a list of patterns you find — push yourself to identify at least four. Come to class ready to discuss.

1957 Dove Soap — “Dove “creams” your skin while you wash”

1970s Camay Soap — “You’ll be clean and creamy with Camay”

1980s Caress Soap — “For the soft you can’t get with soap.”

2000s Pure & Natural Soap — “For a clean that’s purely natural, Pure and Natural”

2010 Dove Beauty Bar — “Take the Dove 7-Day Test and feel the difference for yourself”