One Square Mile: Social Portraiture

In our lesson we learnt about how photographers taking documentary photographs influenced people's opinion and changed the lives of many people.

The first photographer we learnt about was Lewis Hine. Lewis Hine was born in 1874, only becoming a photographer in 1904 when asked by his headmaster to document school activities. Paul Kellogg was working for Charities and the Commons, a social welfare magazine and was nationally distributed, as an assistant manager when Lewis met him through the University School of Social Work in Columbia where Lewis was teaching. Lewis Hine thought it would be a great idea to include photographs into this magazine and Lewis' photographs were included in Paul's magazine. At the time Lewis was also working for the NCLC - the National Child Labor Committee. In 1908 Lewis Hine resigned from the university and became a full time photographer working for the NCLC. He travelled all over America wearing disguises to get into factories and mills. 

Lewis got to know the children first before photographing them as he then wrote about their details such as their height, age and name on his photographs. 

Here are some of his photographs.

Lewis Hine's photographs were published in magazines newspapers and posters. He took over 5,000 images of children labour. Due to his photographs he had changed people's opinion of children working as young and in the terrible conditions they did that the law was changed to protect against children working.

http://www.lewishinephotographs.com/thumbnails

http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/hine.php

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/hine-dust.htm

Another photographer we looked at was Dorothea Lange. Dorothea Lange was born in 1895 after finishing school Dorothea took up photography as she didn't have an interest in academics. Dorothea went to Columbia university to study a photography course and after several years she became an apprentice working for many photographers including a portrait photographer called Arnold Genthe. In 1918 Dorothea ran a successful studio in San Francisco with Maynard Dixon. She soon felt unsatisfied with studio works and decided to experiment with landscapes. Dorothea had her first documentary photography in the 1920's when she travelled around the south west of America with her husband photographing Native Americans. In the 1930's when the Great Depression hit she photographed the effects of the economy like she had seen in her home town such as labour strikes. Dorothea soon met Paul Taylor. They travelled extensively across America documenting the hard times for farmers and farm work. Paul Taylor wrote about the difficulties experienced by people and Dorothea took their photographs. 

Her most famous piece of work was the 'migrant mother'.

The migrant mother had 7 children, they were all living in a truck. The mother had to go to work as a pea picker while the children stayed in the truck looking after each other. 

''I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.''

This is what Dorothea Lange commented about her migrant mother experience. 

After Dorothea Lange took this photograph people saw it and realised just how bad the situation was and started to send money to them.

Dorothea Lange documented the condition of displaced farm families and other migrant workers.

Here are some more of her photographs:

http://www.biography.com/people/dorothea-lange-9372993?page=1

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3373

http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/photography-of-dorothea-lange-an-american-archive-hard-times/

The last photographer we learnt about was Don Mccullin who was born in 1935 in northern London. Don left school with no qualifications and joined the RAF serving as an aerial photographer. He had bought his first camera after that and started to take photography seriously by photographing his friends which lead to his first published photograph The Guvners’ a Finsbury Park gang who had been involved in a murder. This appeared in The Observer in 1959. He continued to work for the observer and was assigned to cover the Cyprus was in 1964. This was a long assignment which led him to photograph other wars all the world including Vietnam, Bangladesh, Northern Ireland, Czechoslovakia and many more. Don had no restrictions with his work but in many places was threatened in Beirut and even arrested in Uganda. But this still led him to surprise people at home with the reality of war. Don's sympathised with the victims and the soldiers as he saw many die in front of him. He said “when human beings are suffering, they tend to look up, as if hoping for salvation. And that’s when I press the button.” Although he survived the wars without being badly injured he was scarred in his mind of all the memories and guilt of seeing children and soldiers die. 

Here are some more of his photographs:

Around 1981 Don Mccullin was let go by the newspaper after it was taken over and he took photographs around England in places such as London, Birmingham and Bradford taking photographs. He also did landscape photography. 

http://www.military-history.org/articles/don-mccullin-biography.htm

http://markgeorge.com/mark-george/don-mccullin/don-mccullin/

After seeing photographers whose images changed opinions we had to find an image that could be by anyone that brought awareness about an event or changed someone's opinion. 

This is the image I found.

This image was taken by Malcolm Browne in 1963 11th of June.  
Malcolm Browne was assigned to write for a military magazine called 'Pacific Stars and Stripes' launching his career in the military.  He won a Pulitzer prize due to this photograph and received many job offers. 
In the image there is someone setting them self on fire while a crowd of people stop and watch as it happens. It looks like it was taken in a busy street in the middle of a town but maybe a poor town as there is only one car and people are walking to where they are going. What is actually happening in the photograph is a Tibetan monk Thich Quang Duc 73 years old is sat at a busy intersection and had two other monks pour gasoline over him. A large crowd of Buddhists and reporters watched as he lit a match and burned to death within moments while he remained seated in the lotus position without flinching or crying in pain. Thich Quang Duc's heart remained intact not burning and was seen by other monks as the heroic minded one. 
Thich Quang Duc was protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by Ngo Dinh Diem's Roman Catholic government policies. Due to Thich Quang Duc's immolation there was an international pressure on Diem and he later announced a change to his policies to appease the Buddhists but the changes were not carried out leading to more disputes and protests. During the disputes the heart was seized which caused more damage. More Buddhist monks followed the example of Thich Quang Duc by burning themself. Eventually Diem was assassinated on the 2nd of November 1963 by an Army.


http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/monk.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/09/another-monk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19401031
http://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/browne/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc