RE: [Leica] XXX of the YYY? WAS (something else) (fwd)

[Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>]

Most of us tend to overlook excesses committed by "our" side and milk the
hell out of excesses committed by "their" side.  The most obvious example
for me is how, through most of my lifetime, the Right has condoned or
supported fascist murderers while condemming communist murderers, and the
Left did the reverse.  To my mind, "murderer" should have been the
operative word.

We do the same thing when we observe images and news.  A supporter of Bush
& Co. could argue that the Depression photos were socialist-inspired
propoganda designed to move the U.S. off the track of free enterprise that
had made it great.  And that the Bush carrier landing was simply the
commander-in-chief, a former air national guardsman who had every right to
wear a military flight suit, honoring courageous servicemen and women who
were returning home after having accomplished their ship's particular
mission defending our freedom.

I agree with B.D. that both the Depression-era photos and Bush's grand
touchdown on the carrier are propoganda, in the generic sense of the word.
They were both created with the intent to persuade.  BUT, we have to
remember two things:

1. The standards of journalism were much looser then, and reporters were
often assigned stories hand-picked and tailored to the political agenda of
a publisher or editor or their politician pals. So I'm not sure that the
Lange and Evans photos are much more sullied than much of what passed for
news in the '30s.

2. The Lange and Evans photos do depict something that was true.  Yes,
they went out looking for down-and-out people.  But Lange's migrant mother
was indeed in the situation that was depicted, as the other negatives
show. On the other hand, the Bush landing was a completely stage-managed
event, with the course and position of the aircraft carrier, the flight
suit, and the timing of the landing all managed for maximum impact on the
six o'clock news.  Essentially a Wagnerian photo op.

So I would call the Lange photo more truthful than the Bush landing.

- --Peter

Kit wrote:
> So the difference between the two types of propaganda is in their
> underlying motives and messages. The work of Evans and Lange we
> appreciate, because at some basic level, it strikes us as benevolent,
> because it helped move a country towards doing something about
> poverty. The other instance we find abhorrent, because it glorifies a
> president who apparently fabricated a scheme to move the country
> towards a war it now has to reconsider.

B.D. wrote:
> . . .[Lange and Evans and their colleagues] weren't told - go document
> life in America during the Great Depression; nor were they told to go
> document the lives of people in the Midwest and West during the Great
> Depression - - they were told to go get photographs of poor people
> which would move the great mass of people and put pressure on Congress
> to pass a very specific set of social programs. And that doesn't
> strike me as any different from putting a banner that says "Mission
> Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier onto which a formerly AWOL Texas
> Air National Guard pilot will be flown in a flight suit so that he can
> make a victory speech to the American people. ;-)





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