[Leica] Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange present the truth - Bush presented a fiction.

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

First, Peter, I'm not condemning Walker and Lange, or criticizing their
photography - I'm simply classifying it. And while the standard
regarding the behavior of journalists were very different back then,
Lange and Evans weren't working as journalists - they were working as
government employees. But, again, I am a great admirer of their work.

Second, I would argue - obviously from a pro-New Deal perspective - that
"free enterprise" had failed miserably and the train was already off the
track and laying smoking in the ditch, the cars tossed end over end. Had
Roosevelt's programs not been enacted, we might now live in a completely
different country, because it's pretty safe to predict that had the
depression gone on much longer as it was going, we would have had a
revolution here. And yes, I know, it finally took WWII to end the
depression. But the New Deal programs put allot of people to work, and
gave them hope - and food - and served as a safety valve.

As to Bush and his having the right to wear the flight suit...Does his
having been AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard negate that right?
Some might think so...;-)

So yes, I totally agree with you that Evans and Walker's photos were and
are far more truthful than the Bush photo op - because the poverty and
despair they depicted was real; the end of the war he depicted was not;
nor was his wearing that uniform.

B. D.





- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Peter
Klein
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 8:11 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] XXX of the YYY? WAS (something else) (fwd)



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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