I'm still missing the fabrication and misrepresenting part.
Are you talking about the thumb photoshopping?
I'm still missing the fabrication and misrepresenting part.
Are you talking about the thumb photoshopping?
I think the issue relates to saying they sold tires for food, which they didn't do... and the fact she wasn't a pea picker at the time, she was just waiting for auto repair...
Actually, waiting for auto repair is a seriously stressful part of human condition. Not knowing if the bill will come in a few hundred or a thousand dollars and being stuck where you are... Wonder if any other serious photo essays have been done on that subject...
I consider Trailer Camp Children, Richmond, California a mark of Adams' flexibility, and perhaps a mark of Dorothea Lange's influence. Who you travel with and where you go has a lot of impact on what you shoot.
They were pea pickers.
They were in a pea pickers camp.
I don't see a misrepresentation. If they had finished picking peas and were heading up to pick peaches, it doesn't change the image or story.
The vehicle was stalled in need of repair.
Tires or radiator, doesn't change the story.
Fabrication is to make something that doesn't exist. I don't see this fabrication. I'm
Missing something still.
None of those small details change the story or context of the photo.
He must mean something else I suppose.
Well, actually they were not pea pickers, and they were not quite as destitute as Lange represented in the textual description. They were passing through and had car trouble, which they were in the process of repairing when Lange happened by. The men conducting the repair had gone in search of parts, and the mother and children were just camping while waiting for them. They were not desperate because of the pea crop failure as Lange described, and after the repair they simply drove away.Originally Posted by RichardSperry
That's the fabrication--a story that did not actually happen that was created to exaggerate (at least) the desperation being portrayed. The photo is what it is, but the story surrounding the photo is left unrevealed by the photo and that story was documented falsely. That's why photos can accompany text when used for journalism, but they cannot establish much in the way of fact, let alone truth.
Rick "who never depends on photos to tell a narrative story--that's what words are for" Denney
I agree it's nit picking to tear apart Dorothea Lange for not thoroughly upholding the major requirements of journalism. It appears her interviewing and note-taking skills are less than her photographic skills. I'd be happy to leave it at that.
I have no personal knowledge or depth of study to give any but a personal opinion. But I'm with you, the specific facts are not significantly different. I don't think they really detract. They are just interesting.
I agree with Richard and Bill on this.
For something to represent something else, it does not have to be that something else. I am willing to take "Migrant Mother" (and AA's Trailer Camp Children) as representing the plight and general condition of migrant workers in general
With respect to Dorothea a closer look into her influences would prove fruitful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_H._White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maynard_Dixon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Schuster_Taylor
A treatise into the true inner motivations of Dorothea and that of her second husband Paul Taylor - to whom she was both married to and actively engaged in photographically documenting his research into rural poverty and economic exploitation at the time Migrant Mother was photographed - would be an interesting read indeed.
As far as Ansel, well he never was really interested in documenting the social condition and at the time was engaged in photographing the western landscape. Perhaps he was checking out the possibility of a steady pay check by working for the RA or FSA like Dorothea.
Thomas
A photograph can be successful as art, but unsuccessful as journalism and even a misrepresentation. The claim was that the story accompanying the photograph was a fabrication, and it was. That doesn't make the photograph any less art, but it does expose an agenda on the part of a photojournalist. It's just worth keeping in mind when the topic is the psychology of such photos.
If Sally Mann had made this photo (imagine the technical look), it could be of herself reflecting on the meaning of life after playing in the muddy pond behind the house with her shy kids. The backstory is what makes the photo meaningful to many people, and if it's a fabrication, it forces us to consider whether the photograph's value is visual or whether it depends on its text, and whether the integrity of that text is what makes it have value as art. It's come up as a big discussion recently vis a vis propaganda, particularly the pro-Nazi films made by Leni Riefenstahl.
If Lange had written, "Photograph of a Woman and her Children Waiting on Car Repairs, that Reminds Me of Suffering Among Migrant Farm Workers" would it have become famous and garnered the admiration it has received? What about if it had been published as art with no caption or story?
In music it's a more direct question. For example, is the art of an opera the score or the libretto? There is no obvious or deterministic answer to this question, really. We can't immediately reject the importance of the backstory to the art, when it is provided, without some serious consideration.
Rick "thinking the relationship between art and propaganda is very touchy" Denney
From what I can gather from readings, DL was more of an artist than a photojournalist, at least not a trained photojournalist. The image of the Migrant Mother (MM) represented the thousands of stranded migrant workers who DL saw slowly starving in the camp. It really makes no difference to me, nor to the power of the image, that this particular mother and family were not actually stranded at that camp. DL was on her last leg driving home to Berkeley from a month photographing migrant workers, turned around to make an unscheduled stop at a pea-pickers' camp, took six images of MM in the camp and continued on home. Most likely tired, wanting to get home, and rushed, I am not surprised she did not get her facts straight.
The MM was a migrant farm worker....she just happened not a pea-picker. At least she did end up making some money out of the photograph, though she was in bed with a stroke and may not have known about the $25,000 to $35,000 that was raised by donations for her care -- directly because of the photograph. Far more money than DL made directly with the image. And her kids seemed to value the image enough to put "FLORENCE LEONA THOMPSON Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood" on her gravestone.
rdenny,
The daughter said they, the whole family including children, picked everything they could. The photos were taken at the pea farm. The older children would pick in front of the mother, as she dragged the babies behind her in cotton sacks. Cotton, tomatoes, artichokes, or peas; who cares?
"Not as destitute"? They have 3 adults and 7 children living in a Depression Era Joad Mobile. This made them more than poor?
From what I make of the story, Lange was not a journalist nor employed as one. The daughter says she didn't even ask her mother any real questions, just her age and permission to take the shots. No other real questions, sounds like not a journalist to me.
Maybe the daughter's the fabricator.
Myself, I don't think you can get much poorer in America than that without eating the babies(or being a slave). Maybe I'm just wrong.
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