ARTS664/ SOCS664American Photography and the Social ConscienceMel McCombieSeptember 12 - December 16, 2016
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Course Overview
"The camera never lies," but it certainly can persuade. From its inception, photography has been enlisted in the cause of social change throughout the United States. During the Civil War, images from the Brady studio helped persuade the Union of the justice of its cause. Anthropological images made from the 1860s to 1880s helped define the vanishing Native American communities of the west; the romantic images of photographers like Edward Curtis created sympathy among white easterners for 'the vanishing race.' In the later 19th century, photography became the handmaid of progressive reform in the hands of Jacob Riis, whose book How The Other Half Lives convinced the public of the need for urban reform. In the 20th century, sociologist Lewis Hine found his photographs of child laborers far more effective than text alone in stimulating change. And in what may be the most comprehensive photographic project yet undertaken, the Farm Services Administration (1935-1943) during FDR's New Deal created a body of iconic images of the great Depression that abide today. We will examine how the FSA photographers Walker Evens, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Jack Delano and Gordon Parks, among others, served the agendas created by the agency head, Roy Stryker, and the photographers themselves. Both World War II and the iconic images from the Vietnam War form the final part of the course.- Faculty Bio
Mel McCombie (B.A. Bryn Mawr College; M.A. Stanford University; Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin) is visiting assistant professor at Trinity College. Her recent publications include "Art Appreciation at Caesar's Palace, in "Cultural Production and Consumption: Readings in Popular Culture," edited by Lee Harrington (Blackwell, 2000).