The People
Two documentary photography projects from the 1950s
and American-ness
The People and The American-ness
Two documentary photography projects from the 1950s
University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Humanities MA thesis History: American Studies Joos Levie Student number: 10186964 joos.levie@gmail.com Thesis advisor: Dr. George Blaustein June 27, 2016
CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
4
CHAPTER ONE
“The American Way” and documentary photography
7
I. The “American Way”
8
II. On Photography
10
III. On a documentary photograph
11
CHAPTER TWO
A Universal Experience?
19
I. Visual imperialism
21
II. The roots of The Family
26
III. A motivated man
29
IV. From Korea- The Impact of War in Photographs to The Family of Man 30
CHAPTER THREE
“The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness
and American-ness”
33
I. Robert Frank and the American documentary tradition
35
II. Robert Frank and Edward Steichen
39
III. An outsider observing “the American Way”
42
CONCLUSION
47
INTRODUCTION
Joe and Fanny Carr, Mose Harmon, and Bill and Juliana Harlan, by Mike Disfarmer, Ca. 1930
Courtesy of the Edwyn Houk Gallery, New York
Disfarmer was a small-town portraitist, who shot this photograph in a studio in Heber Springs, Arkansas. Between 1915 and 1959, he made portraits of the inhabitants of this little American farmer’s town. As the years passed by, he documented all different kinds of people that lived there. Farmers in overalls, families in their best Sunday-clothing, soldiers in
uniform, women whose husbands fought overseas during the World Wars, the poor families during the Great Depression, and the early years of the Cold War.
prints. At the time, they did not have any special meaning other than as portraits of the people who lived in the same town as he did. Only after his death his work was discovered because a community member saved Disfarmer’s negatives, and he became praised
internationally for creating a classic account in the tradition of American portrait photography.1
Many photographers from the 1940’s pictured the war experience. W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White: they went with their camera to where the troops were fighting. What makes Disfarmer’s photographs so remarkable is that they are all taken at the exact same place, but the changing political circumstances create the atmosphere of the photographs in a very concentrated area, and in the United States. Nowadays, we look very differently at these photographs than when they were taken. Where they first were portraits of people who all lived in the same town, today they can be regarded today as a historical documentation of American life through four decades. This is because a documentary photograph has meaning through the photographer’s decision of what ends up in the frame, and the historical, political and social circumstances in which the spectator receives a photograph.
In this thesis two documentary photo projects from the 1950s are discussed. The first project is the exhibition The Family of Man (from now on The Family), from 1955, which was curated by Edward Steichen. “The People” in the title refers to this exhibition, for the show meant to affirm likeness between all humans. The second project is the photo book The
Americans by Robert Frank from 1958, which was praised for portraying the ultimate
“American-ness” by Jack Kerouac in the introduction of the book. When discussing The
Family and The Americans, it seems apparent to emphasize their 1950’s historical setting.
Although both these projects originate from the same decade, they were shaped by consensus politics and the “American Way” of doing things, which came up in the 1930s. This thesis will investigate how The Family and The Americans place within the American tradition of documentary photography, and what shaped the curating process of both projects.
The first chapter will set out what the “American Way” of doing things and the politics of consensus entailed. Furthermore will be explained what makes photography significant as a historical source, focused on American documentary photography. This predominantly
1 Michael R. Peres, ed., The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: Digital Imaging, Theory and
theoretical part is necessary before analyzing the two projects specifically. The second chapter discusses The Family. This chapter will focus on criticism the exhibition received, and offer new insights on the project by taking into account the previous shows Steichen curated, which were essential to the way The Family developed into its final product. This will include the consideration of a speech about the exhibition, written by Max Horkheimer. It offers a unique insight for it regards the exhibition as a product of American culture. The third and last chapter analyzes The Americans as curated by Robert Frank. It will discuss how Frank’s work takes an exclusive position within the American documentary tradition, and how his
interpretation of the United States was shaped by returning symbols that he noticed as he traveled the country, combined with an affinity for the margins of American society.
CHAPTER ONE
“The American Way” and documentary photography
For approximately fifty years, scholars and popular commentators have depicted the postwar years, more specifically the 1950s and early 1960s, as a period of unusual national unity in the United States. According to this idea, never before such consensus existed over the nation’s core values, due to post-war affluence and the Cold War combined. 2 Scholars like Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes reviewed The Family of Man as a product of national unity, or as a project that was aimed at supporting this concept. In cultural politics this was pursued specifically in order to convince the greater public of a united “American Way” of doing things, that distinguished the United States from other countries in the world. The common enemy was overseas, and in order to strengthen security and unity at home, Americans of all different backgrounds worked together.
More recently, scholars focusing on left- and right wing resistance during this period have challenged the picture of ideological cohesion in the early Cold War decades. This chapter will identify the politics of consensus and perception of the “American Way,” as constructed during the New Deal. These two concepts were central to shaping cultural
politics between the 1930s and 1960s, which makes it highly relevant for the identification of the cultural and historical circumstances in which both The Family and The Americans were created.
To precede their specific analysis, this chapter will identify what documentary
photography entails, and how the circumstances in which documentary images are created, assembled or read should be analyzed. The focus will be on the American use of the medium. Additionally, it will explain how the manner in which people read a photograph is both
2 Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil
culturally and historically determined. To understand the specific documentary aspects of photography, both the documentary and photographical definition of the medium have to be investigated for their meaning. Traditionally, the use of documentary photography has been defined as either a form of objective data compilation, or as a tool of social reform.3
Historians have often regarded photography as a form of documented evidence that could illustrate historical events from approximately the beginning of the nineteenth century, when photography developed as a popular medium, to the present day use. Scholarly faith was placed in the realism of the photographic image, based on the belief that it is a
mechanical production of reality.4 Nevertheless, to understand documentary photography as objective is highly problematic. In her iconic book of essays On Photography Susan Sontag captured this by stating: “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.”5 To state that a photograph is a mechanical reproduction of reality undermines both the role of the
photographer as well as that of the historical, cultural and social circumstances in which the picture was taken. The manner in which a photograph is received depends on the same conditions that decide how the spectator reads the image.
I. The “American Way”
One question emerges when discussing the “American Way” of doing things, namely how a tone of unity was a general conception in writing and politics from an era when America was internally divided?6 Wendy Wall tackles this question in her book Inventing the “American
Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement. She
argues that the consensus politics that were eminent in the mid- twentieth century actually originated in the 1930s with the New Deal, and that that this was not a natural development, but a well-organized political project. These projects lasted over three decades. The success of consensus politics collapsed in the late 1960s and early 1970s when American patriotism declined because of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the elites who had
3 Stuart Franklin, The Documentary Impulse (Phaidon, 2016), 8–9.
4 James Curtis, “Making Sense of Documentary Photography,” History Matters, 1, accessed May 9, 2016, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/photos/photos.pdf.
5 Susan Sontag, On Photography, Pearson Always Learning (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 4. 6 Wall, Inventing the “American Way,” 5.
shaped the illusory national consensus were no longer able to obtain this idea in changing political climates and declining patriotism.
The “American Way” of doing things was a term that came up increasingly in American media in the 1930s, and it was used by conservatives and liberals in guide-like explanations for America-themed subjects, varying from among others, religious, literary or musical accounts (The American Way of Playing Ukulele Solos). By 1937 the phrase was widely used, but not defined specifically. Harper’s Magazine therefore announced a $1,000 essay contest. The magazine asked its readers to help reinterpret and restate American traditions in the light of threatening ideologies from abroad and the Depression at home. That
“American” phrases like democracy, liberty and equality of opportunity mean different things for all Americans, as the editors stated, was re-affirmed with the 1570 essays the magazine received in response. Where they hoped to receive overall agreement on the nation’s core values the responses varied from pro-communist argumentations to specific analysis of the backgrounds and principles of the early settlers, Constitution-makers and Founding Fathers. A columnist of the magazine would later state that “Anyone can shout ‘American Way’ in furtherance of his own interests and nearly everyone does.”7
The essay contest and the emergence use of the “American Way” more generally affirm the nation’s quest for the meaning of national identity in the 1930s. Of all projects that were set up in the following years to re-state those values, The Freedom Train from 1947 was the most extensive one. The train was a touring exhibit with 133 historical documents and memorabilia. It contained pieces like the Bill of Rights, Washington’s copy of the Constitution and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The train departed from Philadelphia in September 1947 during the 160th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution and traveled all over the United States, through New England to the South and to the West Coast by the Spring of 1948, to arrive in Washington D.C. during the inauguration of president Truman in January 1949. As Attorney General and sponsor of the project Tom C. Clark stated: “It’s an American program which seeks to re-establish the common ground of all Americans.”8
It was one of the first large cross state attempts to articulate identity and citizenship after the New Deal and World War II. Designing an idealist vision of America’s past and common heritage would supersede present-day conflicts over inequality, by emphasizing abundance
7 Ibid., 15–17.
8 Stuart J. Little, “The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture 1946-1949,” American
and opportunity of capitalism while celebrating basic individual freedoms and the democratic process. On the surface the Freedom Train program carried out a consensual vision, created through an elitist process. It reflected on its creator’s interests and identities, for it was moderately pro-business and acknowledged a labor and state role as abating partners. In the symbolism and language used lay embedded that democratic consumption was a crucial measure for the American administration. The varying race relations in different regions of the US, and specifically segregation in Southern states challenged the program’s rhetoric. The “American Way” defined cultural politics in the time of The Family and The Americans. Creating an exhibition to affirm likeness among people like the
Freedom Train is a project comparable to Edward Steichen’s curating for The Family of
Man that will be discussed in the next chapter. The different race relations were highly
influential on Robert Frank’s book, which will be set out more specifically in the third chapter on The Americans.
II. On Photography
Before discussing these projects, more has to be said on the meaning of photography and specifically documentary photography for the people who “view it.” Roland Barthes stated photography as “unclassifiable,” when trying to examine its meaning for humanity in
Camera Lucida, a collection of short essays on photography. Photography reproduces a
situation that happened only once into infinity, and can never occur again in the same context. Barthes identified how a photograph can never be distinguished from what it represents, or who created it. He observed three practices that a photograph can be objected to: to do, to undergo and to look. The photographer he called the Operator, who decides what is included in the frame. The Spectator is everyone who observes photographs, and lastly the Spectrum is the person or thing that is being displayed in the image.9
A photograph is at its most basic level “a picture, likeness or facsimile obtained by photography.”10 This definition implies a mechanical reproduction of reality in the broadest sense. Since the nature and technical practice of photography has varied strongly since the nineteenth century, this definition mostly covers the technical aspects of photography. The
9 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 2. impr, Flamingo Edition (London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1988), 4–9.
oldest photograph in existence is an unclear window view at an estate in France from 1826, which is the result of an eight-hour exposure to light. The complexities that establish the photograph’s meaning as an image and an object depend on the historical, cultural, social and technical context. Its value as an object is always dependent on the conditions in which we ‘read’ it. The act of ‘reading’ a photograph is relevant in this context. When an image is presented to a public, the spectators do not engage in an inactive form of looking at it. Examining a photograph is more related to reading than it is to looking. There is no passive act of recognition but just like when regarding specific text, the spectator will engage in developing a relationship between the reader and the photograph in a series of observations, through what is called a photographic discourse: an individual form of communication that varies in relation to one’s individual historical and cultural context.11
On a functional level, the context in which a photograph is presented determines for a great part its reception. An obvious example would be the use of black and white print versus color images or its size. Also the material the photograph is printed on and where one would encounter the image, like a newspaper versus a gallery, determines our full experience. What is further problematic in the reading of a photograph is the shifting distinction between its function as an image and the assumed value it has. An ‘art’ photograph involves a radically different set of assumptions from a ‘documentary’ photograph.
III. On a documentary photograph
The photographic history of the twentieth century has been dominated by documentary photography in many ways.12 The rapid development of photographic techniques together with changing social conditions all over the world, has developed documentary photography into one of the broadest accepted and contemplated mediums from approximately 1900 onwards. The camera is shown at its most powerful in documentary photography. An
experience is presented to the public, mostly concerned with subjects like social and political injustice, crime, war, poverty, disaster, all difficult subjects to capture and the result will always be approached through the predetermined assumptions of the photographer. To regard the medium as an objective historical account would be to dismiss the entire social and
11 Ibid., 27.
cultural setting in which the image was taken, and simultaneously depict the position of the creator as neutral and passive. Within the area of photographical representation, documentary photography has suffered most from this misconception, because of the presumed objectivity. The definition of “documentary” can be misleading when it concerns photography. The very word itself implies objectivity, for document means ‘evidence’, and comes from the Latin documentum, which refers to an official paper. It suggests an authority and significance that reflects its objectivity on the genre of documentary photography. But in photography this can never be pursued perfectly, mainly because the role of the photographer is definite when it comes to deciding what ends up in the frame.
In Why People Photograph (1994), American photographer Robert Adams explains: “At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this
perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect- a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.”13 In this view, the photograph is intrinsically linked to its creator, the photographer. It is a form of documenting something visual that is not quite comprehensible to the photographer, but a perspective will be created once an image is taken. Many photographers and cultural critics have written about photography, varying from the manner in which a single frame is
significant, to the way photography in general enhances a perspective, like Adams did. Central to this approach is the idea that photography makes a documentary, which is an outlook that can give the spectator a new insight on something he is not fully aware of.
The documentary tradition begins with the Danish photographer Jacob Riis, who immigrated to the United States in 1870. He created the photo book How The Other Half
Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York in 1890, establishing one of the earliest
examples of a comprehensive photo documentation of the lower social class of Americans. Conscious of the fact that many upper- and middle class Americans were unaware of the dangerous living conditions poor immigrants had to cope with in urban areas, Riis
documented their lives and created a classic account in early photojournalism, becoming a peer in the field of using photography to call for social reform. His work was a window view to a specific part of American society: this is what life is like for some of your fellow citizens.
13 Robert Adams, Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews, 1st ed (New York: Aperture, 1994), 179.
Generally recognized as the most famous American documentary project was the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic project that ran between 1935 and 1944. During the Great Depression the FSA commissioned famous photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to document the environmental crisis and the farmers it affected, ultimately creating a visual encyclopedia of American life. Some of the pictures would be included in
The Family two decades later. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, the famous photograph of
a desperate mother surrounded by three children whilst fighting starvation is the most famous example. Shortly after Lange had taken the photograph it was published in a San Francisco newspaper, which alerted the authorities to send food to the camp instantly. The photographs portrayal of rural America became an iconic visual representation, including influencing John Steinbeck to write his novel The Grapes of Wrath.14
As Robert Adams stated, the role of the photographer is intrinsically linked to its
subject, which underlines why documentary photography can never be regarded as objective. Jacob Riis wanted social reform primarily, and used photography as a tool to pursuit this goal. He made specific decisions in his work that could contribute to this, for example he included small children that were sleeping in the streets in his portraits, to reflect on society’s neglect. Interestingly, these sleeping pictures were often made in broad daylight. On the image Street Arabs retreat in Church corner on Mulberry Street, one of the boys is clenching his face uncomfortably as he lays down, clearly pretending to be asleep. It suggests that the picture is staged in some way, or even that Riis asked his subjects to pretend to be asleep for the sake of the photograph.
14 Don Nardo, Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression, Captured History (Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books, 2011), 21.
Street Arabs retreat in Church corner on Mulberry Street by Jacob Riis, ca. 1880s
Source: http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/Street-Arabs-retreat-in-Church-corner-on-Mulberry-Street.-2F3X-C580JLYM.html
Documentary photography is most significant when it captures a compelling scene, for this is something people can relate to emotionally. Especially a mother-and-child like symbolism comes back repetitively. Tragic family situations evoke emotion that the spectator will remember. For example with the presence of children, like the Migrant Mother her struggle is emphasized by her needing children who embrace her but turn their faces away from the camera.15 Riis took a picture of a mother carrying a bundled child in a shed-like house called In the Home of an Italian Rag-Picker, Jersey Street. The positioning of the mother and baby in an un-homelike environment, the mother glancing up to the ceiling remind the spectator of a biblical scene with Mary holding baby Jesus. In The Americans a photograph from
Charleston, South Carolina is included where a black woman holds a white infant as she
leans against a wall. They both stare in another direction, and offer a striking picture of family life in 1950s Southern states.
Similarly to displaying recognizable images, recording absence can also strengthen the value of a documentary photograph. FSA photographer Russell Lee’s Christmas Dinner in
the home of Earl Pauley has become a famous account of this, for it portrays an exact
opposite from a classic American Christmas dinner.
Christmas dinner in home of Earl Pauley. Near Smithfield, Iowa. Dinner consisted of potatoes, cabbage and pie,by Russell Lee, 1936.
Source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998022077/PP/
It shows four small children and a father crammed around a small table. Their poverty is emphasized by their surroundings; their dinner table is positioned in a shack. There are no chairs for the children to sit on, and the smallest of them has to stand on a box to reach her dinner, which consists of potatoes, cabbage and pie as the caption of the photo reads. The mother is not present in the image, and when Lee later recalled the circumstances in which this photo was taken, he reported that the farmer was a widower who had to provide for his four children by himself. Interestingly, the FSA file contains another photograph titled Mrs.
Earl Pauley and some of her children, which was not published. Here the mother is standing
in the doorway of their house with two of the children that are also on the dinner photo. It suggests that Lee directed the dinner photo very carefully, leaving the mother out of the family dinner to highlight the contrast with the standard picture of American family life during the holidays, which his readers would have in mind.16
In the modern age of digital photography, it is easy to forget how in the late nineteenth century producing only a single picture was a profound operation. Often multiple different subjects were in Riis’ images, which he all had to instruct to stay absolutely still, or else the picture would be ruined. For his famous photographs that were taken after sunset Riis relied on a relatively new invention at the time, a magnesium flash powder that is most likely the explanation for the disorientated and startled look the tenants have in his picture Lodgers in
Bayard Street tenement, Five Cents a Spot. Within a crowded dark place like the Bayard
Street tenement, the sudden bulk of flashlight would have surprised the tenants, since it is unlikely they ever encountered this invention before. The use of the powder was not without risks, for Riis’ flash reportedly set two houses on fire during his visits, once setting himself aflame as well.17
16 Ibid., 13. 17 Ibid., 6–10.
Lodgers in Bayard Street tenement, Five Cents a Spot, by Jacob Riis, 1889.
Source: http://www.moma.org/collection/works/51194?locale=e
Similar things about producing a photograph can be said about FSA photographer Walker Evans, who distinguished himself by his preference to work with an 8 by 10 view camera, which for documentary photography purposes was fairly unpractical to say the least.18 In use, these cameras were ponderous, uneasy to handle and time-consuming to set up. Moreover, the photographer always needed the support of a large tripod, which made it unable to use in a rugged environment. One film sheet could be loaded into the camera at the time, also delaying the photo taking process. Nevertheless, the bigger sized negatives this camera would publish would offer the photographer to create larger prints of very high quality. The lens and the camera could both move independently, so Evans was able to direct precisely what would end up in the frame. By using this camera he proved immaculate photographic skills, but just like Riis he also needed his subjects to stay absolutely still in the process not
18 Hank O’Neal et al., A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People, 1935-1943 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 61.
to blur his images. This suggests that a substantial amount of directing was put into his documentary images.
Robert Frank used a hand-held Leica camera when he travelled around, which allowed him to take pictures in a way that opposed Evans’ approach. He often shot pictures from his car, resulting in portraits a little below eye-level, giving his pictures a poetic ambience and a blur, which was condemned by some critics for bad photographic quality but was exactly how Frank liked to work and wanted his pictures to look. He preferred to photograph quickly and unnoticed, not to disturb the situation he was documenting.
Overall, American documentary photography is not an objective form of visual data compilation, but a curated form of art, where a perspective is created through the manner in which a photographer decides what ends up in the frame, or the approach in which the pictures are assembled by the person creating an exhibition or photo book. Within the FSA collection, the Migrant Mother is part of a larger product. The pictures did not only resemble life for Americans in the affected area, they are specifically significant for they resemble a historical account: overproduction during the Great Depression, and Roosevelt’s New Deal that would help restore the economy by setting up administrations like the FSA that issued this documentation. The selection that the photographers provided was impressive: no nation had ever issued a documentation project like this one. Today over eighty thousand prints and two hundred thousand unprinted negatives are stored in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.19 Thus far, the vast majority has never been published.
The circumstances in which photographs are curated accompanied with other work, like in a photo book or exhibition, also determine its reception for the viewer. In The Family
of Man, the Migrant Mother was placed between portraits of people mourning and people
suffering from hunger from all over the world. The distinctive political value was changed in this setup. The ache is no longer shown as a result of American politics, for it portrays here how grief and suffering is universal, as Steichen wanted to carry out foremost. His decision to use the most famous picture from the FSA archive would have a special appeal to the American public that would likely recognize the famous image; nonetheless this was not necessarily the case for any member of the foreign public that would visit the show in their home country.
CHAPTER TWO
A Universal Experience?
One person can be considered the sole success behind the international fame of The Family of
Man, namely Edward Steichen, who created the concept and curated the show. The exhibition
was the last project of Steichen’s career as a curator. In his autobiography from 1963 he reflected on the exhibition as the most important project he ever realized. Steichen had
curated numerous exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Although they all had high attendance rates, none of them was as successful nationally and internationally as The Family. In the first stages of the project, Steichen explored the possibility of creating a show about human rights. This idea was subsequently never fully developed because Steichen believed its implications were too negative, which was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. Steichen believed that human rights were a weighty subject in national and
international politics at the time, and making implications about human rights could only divide his audience instead of achieving unity, which was his foremost purpose of action. It was when Steichen read Carl Sandburg’s, biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg was his brother-in-law, that he stumbled upon a speech directed at Congress in which Lincoln used the phrase “family of man,” deciding that this would be the overarching theme in his next project.20 This chapter will explore why Steichen became passionate about the concept of an exhibition that carried out the message of equality and likeness of people. This is for a significant part related to his earlier work for the MoMA.
On the last day of the exhibition, the New York Times reported: “when “The Family of Man” exhibition closes at 7 p.m. today it will have run up the greatest attendance record at the
20 Ibid., “The Museum of Modern Art and The Family of Man”, in A Life in Photography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday (1963), chap. 13.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) since the 1940 “Italian Masters” show.”21 Over 270,000 people came to visit the exhibition in the 103 days it was on display at the MoMA, making an average of 2,600 daily visitors. This was only the beginning of the international success
The Family would become in the following years. The exhibition would travel through many
museums all over the United States, and simultaneously duplicates of the show would be on display throughout Europe and Asia. As the New York Times reported, The Family was the most widely publicized photographic exhibition ever held in the country, and thus far the responses were mostly enthusiastic.
Creating this exhibition was the most considerable challenge that Steichen had faced in his career thus far. It was a significant project that demanded the largest production process that Steichen had ever participated in. The MoMA guaranteed large funds to cover the expenses for the production of the exhibition, giving Steichen a carte blanche to explore all possibilities for the show to become his greatest exhibition ever. Steichen was confident that American photographers would be able to supply a substantial amount of material to include in the show. Nevertheless he took a trip to Europe in 1952 where he visited twenty-nine cities in eleven countries to become certain of the fact that there would be a source for the project from outside the United States as well. The Museum appointed photographer Wayne Miller to assist Steichen in realizing the project. They started sending out request letters for photographers to contribute to magazines like Life and Seventeen, agencies like Magnum, Black Star and the Soviet Union’s SovFoto, societies and individual photographers all across the world. They went through the files of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), National Archives, and Library of Congress.22 They went over 2 million print photographs, narrowing them down to 10.000 to ultimately end up with the 503 photographs representing 68
countries that were on display in the museum. These prints were then divided up major themes to develop a sequence, all with the help of several assistants.
When reviewing the exhibition for Popular Photography in 1955 Arthur Goldschmidt jr. predicted the show would be “praised, dammed, criticized and discussed for a long time to
21 Jacob Deschin, “‘Family’s’ Last Day: 270.000 Have Visited Steichen Exhibition,” New York Times, May 8, 1955.
22 Fred Turner, “The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America,” Public Culture (2012), 59.
come.”23 He was right. The Family has been both acclaimed and denounced in scholarly
literature since the exhibition opened its doors for the first time. When reviewing the exhibition in the decades following, most writers tended to focus on the nature of the project and put the show within its timeframe of the first decade of the Cold War. They condemned the motives of the exhibition for portraying false sentimentalism and idealism as a counterweight to the American government that repressed minorities on a national scale, and practiced covert politics and the military invasions overseas. A lot of the material on display came from projects funded by the American government, such as the FSA, and moreover the United States
Information Agency (USIA) had subsidized the international spread of the show.
However, within this debate on the ideological nature of the exhibition scholars have often overlooked the fact that The Family had three precursors: Steichen curated three earlier exhibitions in the 1940’s and 1951. These were Road to Victory A Procession of Photographs
from the Nation at War in 1942, Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of our Navy in Action on the Sea and in the Sky in 1945 and Korea-the Impact of War in Photographs in
1951. This chapter will set out the debate around the universalist motives of The Family, by investigating the link between The Family and Steichen’s earlier exhibitions. This is
significant for scholars have neglected this thus far. This chapter will subsequently argue how the exhibition is to a lesser extent a product of Cold War propaganda, and the ideological nature is best discussed through examining Steichen’s earlier projects.
I. Visual imperialism
The scholarly debate around The Family was started, and ruled for a long time, by an essay of French literary critic and philosopher Roland Barthes. His book Mythologies from 1957 contained an ideological critique on the language of what Barthes defined as “mass culture.” Through a semiotic approach it analyzed the mechanics of this language.24 One chapter in the book was devoted to the exhibition. The essay, called The Great Family of Men, consisted of three small pages. Here Barthes condemned the exhibition for its false universalism of the human condition, which according to him is a myth: “We are at the outset directed to the ambiguous myth of the human ‘community’, which serves as an alibi to a large part of our
23 Monique Berlier, “ The Family of Man: Readings of an Exhibition,” in Picturing the Past: Media,
History, and Photography, ed. Bonnie Brennan and Hanno Hardt, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 209.
humanism.” It denies all forms of injustices in the world, which Barthes argued could not simply be introduced as “differences.” The universal sections in which the exhibition was divided, suppressed all historical weight that is the source of human suffering. Subjects like “life” and “death” in which the exhibition was divided were just as much universal as it is a form of faith, for giving birth means something different to a woman in the United States than to a woman living in a country with high birth mortality rates.25
Barthes criticized the French translation of The Family of Man into The Great Family of
Man, which he argued changed the phrase from a name that could possibly belong to
zoology, into a sentimentalized version. The symbolism in the French translation cannot be denied. However, when the exhibition was on show in the Netherlands in the Stedelijk Museum in 1956, it was titled Wij Mensen, freely translated as “Us People,” a term that implies a unity in mankind but does not speak out on the issue of equality. This should not be confused with a Dutch translation of the American “We the People,” as used in the United States Constitution, for in this context “people” translates to Dutch as “volk,” emphasizing citizens or a cultural group rather than humanity in general. Similarly, the title was translated into German as Wir alle, freely translated as “all of us,” being an even broader term since it does not directly emphasize people nor a family.
Max Horkheimer gave a significantly different perception of the cultural relevance of the exhibition around the same time as Mythologies came out. The exhibition travelled to Germany, and was opened on 25 October 1958 in the German “Haus des Deutsches Kunsthandwerks.” At the opening Horkheimer was asked to deliver a speech, most likely because he was engaged with the Kuratorium Kulturelles Frankfurt who arranged for the exhibition to come to Frankfurt, together with the Amerika-Haus, a cultural center for transatlantic relations.26 Scholars that researched and wrote about The Family knew that Horkheimer spoke at the event, but it was only in 2014 they discovered that Horkheimer’s speech was published in one of the nineteen Volumes of posthumous work.27 What is most interesting about this text is that contrary to Barthes, Max Horkheimer places the exhibition
25 Ibid., chap. “The Great Family of Man,” 100-102.
26 Editorische Vorbemerkung, Nachgelassene Schriften 1949 - 1972, Ungekürzte Ausg, Gesammelte Schriften, Max Horkheimer. Hrsg. von Alfred Schmidt und Gunzelin Schmid Noerr ; 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl, 1989).
27 The speech is included in number 13 of the 19 volumes of writings that were published after Horkheimer passing in 1973.
in an American cultural tradition of investigating individualism, as first started during the Enlightenment in Europe.
On the whole, Horkheimer interprets the inner connection between the separate images in a philosophical manner. The strength of this piece, which gives it a unique position in the scholarly debate around The Family, is that it treats the show as a complex form of thought, and does not condemn it for being merely universalist. Horkheimer claims in his speech how the portrait of humanity in general that the exhibition offers is related to philosophical interpretations of humanity from the Age of Enlightenment. It combines a European, specifically German philosophy with an American “gemeinsam” (shared feeling), to
demonstrate a respect for the individual, no matter his place of birth, social class or religion. Horkheimer states how Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, as explored in the Kritik der
praktischen Vernunft from 1788, is related to the perception of the individual as presented in
this exhibition. This is relatable to the American philosophical ideas as explored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James and John Dewey. Despite their great differences in theory, their outcomes on the so-called new individualism agree with the practical side of Kant’s Idealism. The following quote is most important in understanding how Horkheimer relates
The Family to American culture in general:
Wollte Man den Unterschied bezeichnen, so wäre vielleicht festzustellen, daß in Amerika das Bewußtsein von der Verwandtschaft aller Menschen, von ihrer Brüderlichkeit, wahrscheinlich aus der noch recht lebendigen Tradition der frühen Siedler sowie aus dem Gefühl der gemeinsamen Herkunft von vielen Ländern in der einem Heimat schon immer lebendig war, während das Bewußtsein der Zusammen-gehörigkeit im zerklüfteten Europa der letzten Jahrhunderte wesentlich den
Gebildeten zueigen war und erst jetzt, angesichts der schweren äußeren Bedrohung, zum Gemeingut der vielen Einzelnen wird.28
This quote states specifically how Horkheimer distinguishes a difference between Europe and America that is evident in this exhibition. Where Europe has been torn apart in the previous decades on everything that differentiates people from each other, being aware of all people’s interrelatedness is an active and living tradition in the United States. He traces this
tradition back to the early settlers and how the sense of a shared ancestry has always been active. Additionally, it is remarkable that Horkheimer with his historical cultural criticism spoke so very positively of American culture in this speech. Where he condemned American culture for being empty and doomed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, by “infecting
everything with sameness” here he praises its ability to educate individuals.29
Horkheimer also included his perception of the meaning of photography in this speech. He states how a photograph and its technology have the ability to demonstrate the world “wie sie ist.” Although this is an exclusive trait of photography, it fails to demonstrate the tension between reality and “Idee,” as philosophy can do specifically. He emphasizes how
photography cannot play an abstract role in communicating the idea of humanity, but can offer an educational function as is done through this exhibition. No photograph by itself can engage in philosophizing on “Idee,” but this exhibition is curated and assembled to show the tension between “Idee” and the world “wie sie ist” through a selection of photographs. By stating that photography displays the world as it is, Horkheimer considers a simplified definition of photography. Especially when it comes down to the misconception that documentary photography can offer a form of education through objective representation.
The perception that Horkheimer referred to, The Family as a product of American culture that is in its core united through a focus on interrelatedness, fits into the idea of the “American Way” and the American politics of consensus. He believed that the exhibition shows how people of all Völker should support each other rather than fight the fellow citizens in their community. This would help societies to create the best mode of existence within their possibilities, and it would keep everyone satisfied within the community. The images of the exhibition show that this is possible, and can encourage people to do so. This corresponds closely to the politics of consensus that believed diverse individuals could live together in harmony, at the expense of repressed activism from left- and right wing groups. Similar to disregarding activism in these politics, Horkheimer disregards specific American issues that undermine this hegemony in his speech, like segregation in the South or McCarthyism.
Susan Sontag gave one of the most famous critiques in her book On Photography from 1977. She stated how Steichen’s choice of photographs assumed a human condition or human nature that was shared by everybody. This way anyone who would visit the show
29 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002), 94.
could identify with the people whose portraits were included. Steichen curated this deliberately but Sontag condemned this for being unrealistic. She was troubled with his choice to divide the sections of photographs in universal themes, and stated how the exhibition denied all-determining weights of historically embedded differences between people, injustice and conflicts. This is an argument very similar to Barthes’ argument.30
From the early 1970s onwards critics denounced the project increasingly, after it had been considered a success in most reviews thus far. The most significant criticism from a photographer came from Ansel Adams in his autobiography from 1985. He was revolted when he saw how his photograph of Mount Williamson was included in the exhibition: “I became ill when I saw the finished mural. He had transformed Mt. Williamson (…) into expensive wallpaper”31 Contrary to the celebration of human likeness, as it was interpreted at the opening, scholars criticized the exhibition for its false universalism like Barthes had done as one of the first critics. In the decades after 1955 critics of the exhibition started viewing it as a product of Cold War politics. As American photographer and filmmaker Allan Sekula wrote in 1984: “The Family of Man is merely a smoothly functioning international market economy, in which economic bonds have been translated into spurious sentimental ties, and in which the overt racism appropriate to earlier forms of colonial enterprise has been supplanted by the “humanization of the other” so central to the discourse of neo-colonialism.”32
The overall critique split into roughly these two claims: On the one hand. photographers like Sekula and Robert Frank denounced the setup of the exhibition for being a Life magazine photo-essay writ large: carefully selected and curated, the included pictures were
demonstrated in order to deliver a specific message to a passive audience. Frank had
expressed his difficulties with contemporary magazines multiple times, because they did not speak of the advancement of photography: in these magazines the reader accepts them without question. The presumption is that it should be understood by all readers, even
children. According to Frank the individual photographer’s integrity can raise the level of the
30 Sontag, On Photography, 33.
31 Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 210.
32 Allan Sekula, Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973-1983, The Nova Scotia Series : Source Materials of the Contemporary Arts, v. 16 (Halifax, N.S., Canada: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984), 95.
photograph.33 Secondly, critics believed that the photographic selection was aimed at containing sexual and racial difference within the symbolic borders of the nuclear family. Lastly, because the USIA funded the travels of the exhibitions, some scholars argued that the spread of the exhibition was nothing more than a form of American imperialism in a time of covert politics and military invasions.34 However, when comparing this exhibition to
Steichen’s earlier shows, it becomes apparent that the ideological nature of the show was to a greater extent related to his personal visions of what his work for the MoMA had achieved, and what message he wanted to carry out with his curating.
II. The roots of The Family
Both shows from the 1940s consisted of approximately 150 photographs in substantial installations. All Steichen’s exhibitions, with the exception of Korea were designed in
cooperation with Austrian Bauhaus architect Herbert Bayer. The pictures measured in majority over three by four feet; one specific picture was ten by forty feet. To create an open space for the immense installations that were designed, the MoMA knocked down all interior walls of the second floor that would house both exhibitions. The goal of both shows was to give the visitor an unusual perspective on the United States in warfare. Road to Victory specifically was designed as a road: it ran through the entire floor with images set up from all different angles. Enlargements of prints hung from the ceiling and were shown in various forms to overwhelm the visitor: the photographs did not just speak for themselves but were curated to deliver a specific message. MoMA’s Director of Exhibitions explained at the opening of Road to Victory what the purpose of the exhibition was, and how this message would be received by the public: “ (the show will) enable every American to see himself as a vital and indispensible element of victory (…) no one can see the exhibition without feeling that he is part of the power that is America.”35
This feeling was articulated in a review in the New York Times on 24 May 1955. The reviewer felt overwhelmed with “the wonderful sequence by means of which Steichen and Sandburg have dramatized an American epic.” He describes how he expects everyone, even
33 Robert Frank, “A Statement,” U.S. Camera Annual, 1958, p.115.
34 F. Turner, “The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America,” Public Culture 24, no. 1 66 (January 1, 2012): 56–57, doi:10.1215/08992363-1443556.
35 Museum of Modern Art,“Two Famous Americans Arrange Road to Victory Exhibition at Museum of Modern Art,” press release, May 13, 1942, https://www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_archives/1940s/1942.
the people who think of themselves as worldly, nonchalant or hard-boiled, to leave the
exhibition with brimming eyes, not only of heartache but with tears through which he looks at a new and better day.36
Playing on the emotional response of the visitor was the intended effect, and this was exactly what The Family was criticized for later. Visitors would empathize with the United States’ war efforts after being confronted with the murals of American landscape and American troops overseas, cleverly accompanied by Carl Sandburg’s poetic texts to evoke sentimental feelings of unanimity. The largest mural concluded the exhibition: marching American soldiers and Sandberg’s text, which read:
America, thy seeds of fate have borne a fruit of many breeds, many pages of hard work, sorrow and suffering — tough strugglers of oaken men — women of rich torsos —they live on — the fathers and mothers of soldiers, sailors, fliers, farmers, builders, workers — their sons and daughters take over — tomorrow belongs to the children.37
Mural of marching soldiers in Road to Victory, picture by MoMA staff.
Source: http://greg.org/archive/2011/02/24/the_road_to_victory_and_beyond.html
36 Edward Alden Jewell, “Portrait of the Spirit of a Nation,” New York Times, May 24, 1942. 37 Museum of Modern Art,“Museum of Modern Art Opens Road to Victory Exhibition Arranged by Edward Steichen and Carl Sandburg,” press release, May 18, 1942, https://www.moma.org/learn/resources/ press_archives/1940s/1942.
The same concept was used in 1945, this time clearly aimed at US naval operations in the Pacific: ships in action and between engagements, planes under attack, wounded soldiers being treated. Pearl Harbor played a significant role in the composition of this show, not only because it was the moment the United States entered World War II. It had a personal
motivation for Steichen. When the war had broken out in 1939, he had retired from active practice of photography, and focused his work on the development of new races of
delphinium.38 A few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor Steichen decided to report for active service in the Army, for which he was denied at first instance because of his age: he was already sixty-two at the time. Later, Steichen was responsible for the most
comprehensive photographic records of the United States at war.39 A special Navy Aviation photography unit consisting of six officer photographers, who were reportedly called ‘Steichen’s chickens’ was assembled. Anonymous soldiers made the vast majority of the pictures that were ultimately on display. This included some material shot by automatic cameras that were installed on bombing planes.
Why has this work mostly been overlooked by critics in relation to The Family? This is more surprising since Steichen himself stated in his memoranda that the ‘genesis’ of The
Family laid in the earlier exhibitions. One reason could be that the scale, spread and
international impact of the earlier exhibitions was much smaller than The Family.
Nevertheless Road to Victory was displayed internationally as well. 40 The subjects of these exhibitions were implicitly aimed at the American public, displaying American military power and the intended emotional impact would be less considerable in allied countries than that of The Family, where a universal appeal was the foremost intention. Another argument that often condemned these shows was that the emotionally overwhelming intentions were a form of visual imperialism, a carefully designed plan of the United States government to
38 Edward Steichen was very active in the field of flower-breeding. His delphiniums were displayed in the MoMA in 1936, which was in fact the only flower exhibition ever held at the museum.
39 Museum of Modern Art, “Museum of Modern Art Exhibits Official Photographs of Naval Sea and Air Action in the Pacific.,” press release, January 23, 1945), https://www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_ archives/1940s/1945.
40 Five duplicate exhibitions traveled the world after the exhibition closed at the MoMA. These were adapted to address different nationalities, and renamed as America Marches with the United Nations. To strengthen the allied war effort, the exhibition concluded with flags of American allies, and photographs were added of marching soldiers from the UK, USSR, China and the US. For a more detailed overview, see: Kristie La, “‘Enlightenment, Advertising, Education, Etc.’: Herbert Bayer and the Museum of Modern Art’s Road to Victory,” MIT Press Journals, October 150 (Fall 2014): 63–68.
mentally gather the American public behind their war efforts, or even as a recruiting mechanism to have more people sign up for the Army and the Navy.
III. A motivated man
Steichen’s personal convictions drove him into working with the Navy. He had a dream of documenting a war as it unfolded. Since World War I he had gradually come to the
conviction that if a real image of war could be represented to the world, it might make a contribution toward ending the specter of war. This idea made him eager to participate in creating photographic records of World War II. After his rejection from the Army in 1941 because of his age, Edward Steichen started ‘pulling strings’ with every connection he had, from museum trustees to newspaper editors. He was ultimately approached by David
McAlpin, the chairman of the Photography Committee of the MoMA, with the idea of doing an exhibition at the museum. What started as a contemporary portrait of the United States under the banner The Arsenal of Democracy was abruptly interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor. It left Steichen feeling deeply discouraged for not having been readmitted into the Air Force.
During this period he received notice from the Navy Department in Washington inquiring whether he would be interested in photographing for the Navy, and he replied eagerly. Steichen eventually met with the chief of naval aviation, Captain Arthur Radford, who was taken aback by this senior figure walking into his office claiming that he wanted to promote Naval capacities. Radford was expecting someone much younger. Steichen had to convince the Captain that he could provide all the publicity he wanted through his numerous press contacts. Subsequently he also had to convince the Naval bureaucracy, since he did not pass his physical examination. It took personal involvement of the secretary to get him in. Steichen selected a group of young photographers that worked a diverse range of professions in civil life, from documentary photography and journalism to advertising. Eventually, this resulted in a compelling archive of 14.000 photographs, of which a small selection ended up in the MoMA for Power in the Pacific.41
When returning from active duty at the age of sixty-seven, Steichen still felt ungratified.
Victory and Pacific had been a success in the MoMA and was extensively covered in U.S.
Camera Magazine and U.S. Camera Annual, of which Steichen’s friend Thomas Maloney
was the editor. He was the person who eventually lobbied on behalf of Steichen with the board of the MoMA, which resulted in Steichen becoming director of the Department of Photography in 1947, which he described as “the ideal proposition.” He organized forty-four exhibitions in his fifteen years as head of the department.
About the themed exhibitions like Road, Pacific, Korea and The Family Steichen had a specific philosophy. They were embedded in his desire to have series of photographs
collectively communicate a significant human experience: “This is something that an unrelated collection of even the finest photographs obviously cannot accomplish. Photograph, including cinema and television as well as the printed page, is a great and forceful medium of mass communication. To this medium the exhibition gallery adds still another dimension.”42 An exhibition like that would look more like a production of a play or a novel, not a show of individual works of art. It must have an intrinsic aim to give it a universal aspect, creating a unity of all the works. What was important to him was that visitors could follow their own pace, in order to let this unity sink in. Contrasting images in different scales and focus points would give the visitor the ability to actively participate in the exhibition like it was unachievable through any other form of visual communication.
IV. From Korea- The Impact of War in Photographs
to The Family of Man
Although the format and design for The Family were established through his 1940s
exhibitions, the Korean War show from 1951 played a significant role in the development of
The Family. In 1963 Steichen would reflect in his memoirs A Life in Photography on the latter
show as “the most important undertaking of his career.” The Korean War had undergone more photographic interpretation that any of the previous wars Steichen had portrayed. He therefore had to single out a substantial amount of photographs to ultimately create the selection of a little over a hundred prints from 25 photographers that would end up in the show. The selection contained work from Life Magazine photographers, as well as The Associated Press,
International News Photos, Army, Navy, Air Corps and Marine Corps. During a press preview
Steichen stated: “Here are photographs with something important to say, and they say it.”43 The goal was to present the war in all its gruesomeness. Steichen hoped that this exhibition would help the viewers hate warfare by the time they left the museum. He observed how people came in great numbers to see the show. They were moved by the pictures, sometimes revolted by what they saw, but by the time the visitors left the MoMA they dried their eyes and forgot about the horrors that took place in Korea. This left Steichen reflecting his work. He wrote: “…I had failed to accomplish my mission. I had not incited people into taking open and united action against war itself. What was wrong? I came to the conclusion that I had been working from a negative approach, that what was needed was a positive statement on what a wonderful thing life was, how marvelous people were, and, above all, how alike people were in all parts of the world.”44
This quote is perhaps the strongest argument to explain how The Family of Man
originated from Steichen’s perspectives on photography and its power to unite people behind it. When taking this perspective, one could see how Victory, Pacific and Korea were all projects that led to The Family as a grand finale, the highlight of Steichen’s career at the MoMA, and the accomplishment of his dreams about war photography.
Steichen worked for the MoMA until he was 83. In 1963 he retired and wrote A Life in
Photography, a book that combined his photography with written memoirs. Interestingly,
Steichen does not reflect on any of the criticism The Family received. More specifically, he even says that he had never expected the immense success: regardless of the country the exhibition was shown, the responses were overwhelmingly positive and “always the same.” Though he writes about his life and work in chronological order, and most of the narrative is based on facts of where he went and who he met, there is a sense of nostalgia in the way he looks back at his career and the places he traveled. He concludes his chapter on The Family by narrating his visit to the Soviet Union in 1959.
During the two weeks that Carl Sandburg and I were in Russia, I probably met and talked to more Russian people at “The Family of Man” exhibition than I could have met and talked to in two years under ordinary conditions. These contacts left me with the impression that the Russian people were more like Americans than the people of
43 Museum of Modern Art, “Photography Exhibition ‘Korea - The Impact of War’ to Go on View at Museum,” https://www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_archives/1950s/1951, press release, January 14, 1951. 44 Steichen, A Life in Photography, chap. 13.
any other country I visited. I was also left with the impression, however, that
everyone I met in Moscow was convinced that the Soviet system of government was superior to any other in the world. When we landed in Stockholm on our way home from Moscow, I suddenly became conscious that, for the first time in two weeks, I was breathing freely again. Freedom is something that is in the air of a country.45
His sentimentality is emphasized in this quote. The experience in Russia that The Family offered him was unique, and only through this project he was able to comprehend Russian people for how they truly are: more alike Americans than people of any other nationality. What he means by this is not explained. In this manner, he contradicts his own
universalist statement by emphasizing a special experience and interaction with Russians to notice how they are alike Americans. This is only in their personality, for the political tension was the reason that Steichen felt he could only breathe freely again after leaving the communist country.
CHAPTER THREE
“The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness
and American-ness”
The freedom that Steichen so vividly recalled was experienced quite differently by Robert Frank as he traveled through the United States to document for The Americans. His first experiences with segregation in the Southern states would be determining for the book he was going to make.
To photograph people and to center the attention on industrialisation [sic]. The people in the midst of this era of progress and the effect it has upon them… I don’t think this should be a rigidly planned trip, but that the photographs – with some text – should be a spontaneous record of a man seeing this country for the first time (except N.Y.) I feel like the U.S. is the country that is evolving more rapidly than any other country and that my project is bound to be incomplete but I am sure it will be a vivid and valuable report.46
This quote is part of the draft letter Frank wrote to request a Guggenheim fellowship, which was granted to him. It would help realize his photographic project that would eventually become The Americans.47 The book would be first published in France in 1958 as Les
Americains, and a year later in the United States.48 It has been widely recognized as one of the most seminal photo book ever produced. Frank traveled across the US by car and looked
46 Robert Frank, draft application for John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, 1954, printed in: Sarah Greenough, Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans (Washington : [Göttingen] : New York, NY: National Gallery of Art ; Steidl ; Distributed in North America by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2009), chap. Manuscript Material p.352.
47 The draft letter was written by Frank himself. The letter that would eventually be sent was mostly written for him by Walker Evans, who he was friends with.
behind the surface to reveal the elements that made American society “more rapidly evolving than other countries.” Being a European immigrant, Frank had emigrated from Switzerland to the U.S. in 1947, different parts of American society stood out for him that he found back in the objects and people he liked to photograph. Whether he actually thought America was evolving faster than post-WWII Europe is questionable, since the U.S. was not the only country that was quickly developing in the early 1950’s. In the final version of his application, this statement was removed.
Frank had made very few trips outside of New York before he started his journey, but he believed he was highly qualified to give an interpretation of the country through
photography, without planning what he wanted to capture in advance. Everything he would encounter would be new to him. Many issues came to light that are still very topical, like racism, the position of minorities within American society and poverty. This made the book not very warmly welcomed in the States at first, prior to being an immense success and a project that is still discussed today. Reviews have split in roughly two sides, those who condemned Frank’s cold and critical assessment of the United States and those who embraced his vision. The review in Popular Photography Magazine called the book “a slashing and bitter attack on some U.S. institutions,” and a little more expressive “a wart covered picture of America.”49 An article in the New York Times from 1969 described Frank’s camera work as a finger pointing: “look here, and here – to show what you may have missed and should be known if America is to be understood.”50 The latter review is more accurate in describing exactly what Frank intended to do with his work when he wrote his motivation letter.
This chapter will firstly highlight Frank’s position within the documentary photography tradition, which is in many ways unique. Secondly, it will investigate the relationship
between Robert Frank and Edward Steichen both personally and through work, to illuminate their influences and contrast between their projects. The last part will highlight how The
Americans is a portrait of the “American Way” of doing things.
49 Robert Frank, National Gallery of Art Elson Lecture 2009: Robert Frank, accessed through Soundcloud.com, March 26, 2009.
I. Robert Frank and the American documentary tradition
In many ways, Franks has challenged the documentary tradition when he created The
Americans. Frank recognized that the image he would create of America with his journey
would be a spontaneous record, bound to be incomplete. It was a project of one man by himself. He was aware of the fact that as a photographer, he could only document his surroundings partially, and that this record would be a strictly personal interpretation. As Frank moved around, he rarely stood still to direct his photographs. Overall, he was not interested in merely making a documentary, and reflecting on what he saw around him. He wanted to express his vision of the United States through his photographs.
The first trip Frank made after he received his grant was to Detroit in the summer of 1955. He was curious about the automobile in general, because to him this was central to the industrialization and development of the United States. This was the place Frank wanted to start his journey. He visited factories that summer and remembered being very impressed with the summer heat in the buildings combined with the ever-continuing noise in the factory.51 Some of the pictures he took in the factory ended up in the book, like the image of people at an assembly line or the factory worker sitting outside his workplace. Cars became a central theme throughout his book. He photographed many people sitting in their cars,
pictures that generate a sense of loneliness and exclusion with the reader, because of the way the portrayed people are separated from the rest of the world. Similar to enjoying taking pictures from people in their cars, Frank also liked to take pictures from his car himself, to preserve anonymity and an outsider’s perspective.
Contrary to his American colleagues and predecessors like Lange, Lee and Evans, Frank favored not to interact with his subjects, preferably not being noticed at all. The people he photographed seldom took notice of him, and if they did it is only at the exact moment the photo is taken that they see Frank, because there is no response in their attitude, just a look or a turning head. Frank believed he would change the dynamics of the situation if he pulled out his camera and introduced himself as a photographer, which would undermine the quality of the photograph.52 One of the photographs in The Americans that reflects this clearly is taken in a bar in New Mexico. Frank recalled not feeling very comfortable in the situation,
51 Frank, National Gallery of Art Elson Lecture 2009: Robert Frank.
and taking pictures with the camera lowered to his hip not to draw attention. He admitted how he could have raised his camera or approached his subjects if he had been surer of himself in that situation. But then the photograph would not have the same significant quality as it does now.53 Bar – Gallup, New Mexico by Robert Frank Source: http://www. metmuseum.org/art/ collection/ search/265011
