Due Nov 4

One Photograph, Two Visions

Looking forward to the essay (due a week from this Wednesday), we need to start thinking about mission: What will your essay argue? What insight will serve as its raison d'être?

Start by sketching out your photograph's known qualities. What details draw the viewer's attention? How does the photograph persuade us, and what does it persuade us of? Type this up as a preliminary understanding, pasting that into a comment below.

Then reply to the comment you just created with a second ¶ that presents a deeper insight into the photo's appeal.

For example, looking at Lange's "Migrant Mother," I might start by asserting:

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" appeals to viewers' sense of social justice by calling attention to the squalid living conditions of migrant farm laborers in California during the Great Depression. The photograph's crisp focus renders the children's ragged clothes in fine detail. Dirt smears the cheek of the sleeping infant, while two other children huddle around their mother—as if for warmth, or to hide their faces in shame. The mother looks into the far distance, and in her worried gaze we read the anxieties of a life lived under a canvas tarp by the roadside.

You'll note how this preliminary account gets a lot right. It sums up what a thoughtful commentator might say about the photo at first glance, focusing on surface details that have a big impact on the viewer: the ragged clothing, the children's huddled posture, the canvas tarp, the mother's anxious expression. But it also leaves out one key aspect: the woman's beauty, a quality also notable in the baby's cheeks and the children's hair. That incongruity, seemingly inconsistent with the preliminary account, creates an opening for a thesis-level understanding:

Yet, in the midst of this squalor, beauty shines through. The mother's finely chiseled features, the infant's plump cheeks, the other children's gold-flecked tousled hair all appeal on an aesthetic level, encouraging the viewer to linger rather than turn away in disgust, as we might from a less lovely image of poverty. The secret to the success of Lange's image is not its squalor—a common enough quality in FSA photography—but its beauty.

In prep for class Use the comment box to post a preliminary account of your photograph. Then post a deeper understanding as a reply to the comment you just created (look for the "Reply" link at the lower left corner of your first comment).