Photography

On Gold Mountain questions for March 13

March 13, 2012 by Leslie M-B

Image provided by Metro Transportation Library and Archive, and used under a Creative Commons license

1. On Gold Mountain begins by focusing largely on the story of Fong See. Is Fong See the most important person in the book thus far, or are the stories of other people more important to the narrative and our understanding of the family’s experiences?

2. Larry Sells and Lisa See have noted that “While many people initially read On Gold Mountain because they’re interested in learning about the Chinese-American experience, they often become more attached to the stories of the white women—Ticie, Stella, and Carolyn—who married into the See family.” Do you think this was Lisa See’s intention? Do you think See herself is more fascinated by Ticie’s and Stella’s experiences than those of her other relatives? (Explain your answers.) What are the opportunities and liabilities engendered by readers’ fascination with the white women in the story?

3. Is there a moment when the See and Fong families became more American than Chinese? If so, when? (Consider this question from three perspectives: their own conceptions of their identities, Lisa See’s implied ideas about identity, and your own estimations.) What decisions did individual members of the family make that made them lean more toward one culture than the other? Did gender seem to influence their understanding of ethnicity in the western U.S.?

4. We have spent a significant amount of time this semester discussing photographs. How do the photographs included in On Gold Mountain influence your understanding and perception of the Fong and See families? Explain.

5. In 2001, the Smithsonian Institution put together an exhibition inspired by On Gold Mountain. The 11-year-old digital manifestation of this exhibition remains online. Does the information presented in this exhibit capture the most important aspects, in your opinion, of the Fong and See families’ experiences as Lisa See presents them?

6. Technology now allows for considerably more flexibility in designing online exhibits. Imagine the Smithsonian commissioned your group to revise the On Gold Mountain exhibition website. What suggestions would you make? Consider exhibition content as well as technology and format.

Filed Under: Online exhibits, Photography, The Chinese experience in the West

Dorothea Lange questions for February 16

February 16, 2012 by Leslie M-B

QUESTION 1

Lange’s photographs, as well as those of other photographers working for government agencies or the military during the 1930s and 1940s, were at times deemed too political. At the same time, as Gordon makes clear, the FSA (as well as other agencies) used photographers to make a political argument about the use of government resources to help or hinder particular groups of people. Take a look at some of the following collections of 21st-century photographs from government agencies:

A pool of government agency photos:

The USA.gov photostream on Flickr (you can also browse this collection by tags)

Some individual agency photostreams for your consideration–but you’re welcome to seek out others instead:

What individual or collective arguments, if any, are these agencies making with their photos? Are photographers used by the U.S. government today in the same way they were in the 1930s and 1940s? How and why do women and/or families figure in these images, if at all? Explain your answers.

QUESTION 2

One of the developing themes in this course is mobility—or the lack of it. Lange used highways. “Okies” migrated west. African Americans migrated to Oakland for wartime jobs. Japanese Americans were interned. To what extent did these shifting mobilities in the American west affect women’s roles and opportunities? To what extent do Lange’s photos capture these effects?

QUESTION 3

In what ways did women photographers’ experiences of government employment differ from men’s, and what do their differing experiences reveal about women’s lives in the era under consideration?

QUESTION 4

In Chapter 16, Linda Gordon shares the phenomenon of photo-textual books and describes how each author-photographer pair approached its book differently. Regardless of whether you are sitting with your final project group members or not, discuss with your fellow students what you envision to be an appropriate relationship of texts and photographs in the online exhibition we will build.