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:
- The White House photostream on Flickr
- The U.S. Army’s photostream on Flickr
- U.S. State Department’s photostream on Flickr
- FDA in the lab photo set on Flickr
- USDA photostream on Flickr
- CDC in the Community photoset on Flickr
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.