PHOTOGRAPHERS OF THE DEPRESSION ERA MINI-ASSIGNMENT

Gordonton, North Carolina (1939) -- Dorothea Lange

An Introduction

."You could feel the Depression deepen," noted the writer Caroline Bird, "but you could not look out the window and see it."  The Photo Section of the New Deal's Farm Security Administration struggled, in important ways, to meet Bird's challenge.  Beginning in 1936, a small number of individuals under the guidance of Columbia professor Roy Stryker traveled the nation in an effort to capture images of suffering and resilience.  In so doing, they bequeathed to social historians a rich record of American history during this particular time period.  In total, they took some 300,000 photos.  Although these photos have not yet all been digitalized, a sizeable percentage are available through the Library of Congress web-site.

Your Mission

To work with a classmate in researching the life and photography of one member of the 1930s Depression-era FSA Photography Project.  In so doing, it is hoped you will learn something interesting about the U.S. in the Thirties and also gain experience in analyzing photographs as primary sources.  You should come to class on Wednesday, October 11 prepared to share your group's slide show with the class.

The Procedure

This is an ungraded and informal mini-assignment.  You should, however, devote at least a couple of hours of out-of-class time to this project and coordinate the design of a simple slide show which will serve as one significant component of both your First Half Portfolio and your Class Participations, Contributions, and Professionalism grades  (39% of course grade).

1)  I will assign you to a group on Wednesday, September 27.

2)  Use the provided resources above to both learn about your photographer and to access their 1930s photo archive.  There is no expectation that you work your way through all of the materials provided, and you are also welcome to engage in your own independent research.  You are encouraged to learn about the photographer's entire life, but your dominant focus should be on the photos they took in the 1930s and into the very early 1940s.  Spend much of your time browsing through the gigantic repositories in the The Photos section of your resource page.  Search for particularly interesting individual photos as you proceed and copy these for your slide show.  But try to bring some sort of order in your own mind to these enormous photo collections as you proceed.  Are there particular themes you might highlight in your slide presentation?  What surprised you about these photos?  What did you learn about the photographer and his or her assumptions and perspectives not just through learning about their biographies but through analyzing their photographs as well?

3)  Using the Discussion Forum drop places within Brightspace (you can access these through clicking on the Activities icon on the Brightspace homepage), share your work with your fellow group members.   Then, bring your individual work together into one slide show with captions included (added text and commentary is encouraged though not required).  If it's more convenient for you use an alternate method of communicating with your fellow group members, that is ok, though you should still add a link or a file to the Final Presentation Discussion Forum Box as outlined in #4 below.

4)  Add a One Drive link or a Powerpoint File to your Final Presentation Discussion Forum Box.  I will then access these from Brightspace for our in-class session on October 11.

5)  You are welcome to submit digital or hand-written notes as an extra addition to your Portfolio, though this is not required.

The ruins of the Gordonton Country Store in North Carolina's Person County today