Although Lee Friedlander's photography was partly inspired by Social Documentary and Street Photography, and by photographers like Walker Evans, Robert Frank and most importantly Garry Winogrand, he had his own style at representing the real life of the American urban life. The biggest difference that stands Friedlander among social photographers is that he used a style detached from the literary symbols or comments that Social Documentary and street photographers often use to state their point-of-view in current politics and living conditions in the United States. His main aim in photography was to reveal moments that both identifies and creates the urban life, with its disorder and formlessness. He reveals in his photographs portraits of people trapped in urban frames of some sort, such as shop-windows or doors and use different levels of projections to create this trapped feeling both geometrically and emotionally. If he makes a comment about the current urban-life like his contemporary fellow-photographers, it is a more metaphorical and existential comment than a political-one. The real objective that he tried to find with his photography is to define the place of human-beings in the urban life and in the city itself.
The two photographs that showed the people trapped by the city best are his self-portrait Buffalo- New-York,
The first photograph is the one which possesses the most complex framing and the second-one is the photograph which shows the idea within in the most literal way. If we look at the shop-window photographs in the 60's America in the sense of a consumerism critique, we can say that they make two layers of projection collapse into each other- hence two levels of different realities- and with colliding the different projection layers of the consumer world and the product-world into a one-dimensional projection, these photographs also collide them together, equalizing their roles and defining one with the other. The consumer who buys the products will, in the capitalistic critique, become another product shaped by the capitalistic systems such as the mode. In this critical sense, the use of photography will create a metaphorical connection and state its criticism in a subtler manner than of the social photography of the 50's. Friedlender's photography Boy in Window is according to this critic the most literal example of this tradition, placing a little boy in a shop window as a product. And the sing “Have a Pepsi” just under the boy in the picture also connotes one of the most popular and well-known product of this system, fortifying the 'message' of this picture. We can see in this photograph two different icons from the popular 20th century American photography, the first is the different commercial signs, either as slogans like “Have a Pepsi”or trademarked ads like 'Pepsi-Cola' on the right-bottom corner of the image or '7up' on the right-top corner. This level of advertisements is in collaboration of another iconography style of a close era to make this photograph work in message and in its iconographic value; it is the tradition of photographing distressed or intimidated children that Social Documentary photography, especially these from Lewis Hine or Dorothea Lange. Although we cannot say that this boy in the photograph doesn't have the equal role in the society or the photograph doesn't have the same aim as to those of Hine or Lange, we can nevertheless appreciate that his expression forces the viewer to make a critic about his current placement in the photograph as trapped, and because the picture also includes several elements of advertisement world, though the photograph doesn't implicitly tell a statement or a message, the viewers are easily grasp the meaning behind this composition. This is an excellent example to study how 'Friedlander's photographs work. Almost all of them are trying to figure where the portrayed person stands in this world and though they don't have such powerful and literal meanings, through the use of different elements in the composition, Friedlander creates each time clearly his statement about the changing world that he wants to examine and represent.
Other than the use of consumerism theory, there is also another way to approach in this photo and in other photos of Friedlander with the means of existentialism. Friedlander is the photographer of his era who was most involved with the role and the place of people into the urban society. With its 'modernizing' life-style and urbanization, the life started to change very quickly in the 60's and Friedlander's photographs often try to find a place for his portrayed people, including himself in numerous self-portraits and photographs that has his reflection or shadow in it.
In photographs like 'Boy in the Window', 'Buffalo-New York, 1968', 'Colorado, 1967' and 'Paul Tate', the portrayed people are always in a frame of some geometrical sort; either most commonly by shop windows or by doors etc. Hence the frame in frame context of the images creates a sort of metaphorical prison for its 'characters', the common citizen in this urban life is often trapped from the modern society's tools. His world created by the flattened realities of projections is a disorderly created world where its objects collide with each other and don't have their own proper place and importance or meaning giving by the society. That is how he could create a new solitary picture out of a photo of John F. Kennedy displayed in the window of John F. Kennedy Community Center and his own reflection at that window, in his photograph of 1967 titled 'Colorado, 1967. This is a new solitary image, because of the fact that e cannot see Friedlander's face hindered by the white sheet of paper, we have in this photo a body without a face and a face (J.F.K. Portrait) without a body. They are standing very close in the final one-dimensional projection together, so they eye of the viewer accepts John F. Kennedy's face as the hidden face, connecting the two level of projections together. In this sense, this photo is extremely successful in Friedlander's style to create a sort of surrealist 'whole' from the different part of the compositions.
This sense of portraying the street is also dominant in his picture 'Father Duffy, 1974' where the sculpture of a World War I hero can have the same hierarchy and the same amount of space- if not even less- than a Coca-Cola sign. They both have the same place and same use in the modern world; they are both a product of some sort. This is a highly ironical and critical image showing how the current system can turn a war hero into a product or a commercial icon for an ideology. Like his other photographs, in this picture too the 'portrayed' person -alive or dead alike- is trapped into different geometrical forms and different materials. In this case, firstly the sculpture is behind bars designed to protect it from outside and divide it from the others at the same time, which is unsuccessful according to this photograph- and also in a literal sense he is 'bottled up' like a Coca-Cola.
This photograph can also be read as a visual versus written context. There are two dominant elements in this picture, one is the visual elements like the crucifix and Father Duffy's sculpture and the other is the text of the commercials. In this urban world defined by Friedlander, word is dominant over the visual. The quality and the meaning of the image -the sculpture- is lost in a sea of different written ads that keeps this photo unbalanced. There are layers of texts interfering with the sculpture disallowing the viewer to focus his attention to the sculpture. The place of this portrayed human is lost too into the commercial and consumerist world of today.
Friedlander was also trying to find his own space into this world that he was photographing. That is the reason why he often used his shadow or his reflection as a part of the composition and why the photograph that has the most complex levels of framing is his own portrait. This means that he saw himself more trapped than the people he portrayed, because he was conscious that he added another frame of entrapment in his pictures with the use of photography. People became more trapped with his witness and his understanding of the situation, that means that only when he acknowledged them to be trapped, they became so.
His shadows or reflections entering into the picture were also interpreted by some critics as a parody or ironical reference to the most common errors of amateur photography. According to the conventions of photography, one of the basic and most important rule is the photographer to hide himself not to hurt the integrity of the reality created by the photograph. In this sense, Friedlander choose to stay self-conscious. He didn't see himself as forming a different reality or representing the reality, but simply transforming it with the uses of the medium and he tried to expand the limits of it.
Joel Meyerowitz interpreted Friedlander's use of himself as an object in form of his shadow or his reflection as 'a way to identify that he was there.' (i) In this way, Friedlander is always self-conscious about himself as the photographer and the medium he works with. Social Documentary and Street Photography forbade to the photographers the creation of an illusionary world; the primary duty of both photographic schools is to represent the real life and situations, also in the case of social documentary the grave-ones which needs to draw attention to. As Jonathan Green puts in his article 'Straight Shootings in the Sixties', Winogrand tried to 'make the camera an extension to his eyes', trying to capture the reality of the situation stood in front of him, whereas Friedlander 'made his eyes an extension of the camera' (ii). What is different in these understandings of photography is that Winogrand tried to create an illusion to show his photographs as the reality itself. Even though this understanding is connected to the realism movement, the result are still an illusion, because what a photographer can do with his photographs is only to represent the reality in another form. The use of real materials as objects in the medium will define an art object's bond with the reality, but the medium itself is always artificial. What separates Friedlander from other photographers of his era is the acceptance of this fact in his photographs. Also by the means of self-consciousness, he tried to identify that 'he was there'; his place in this world, and that 'he was the photographer'; his use and identity in this world.
What separates Friedlander from other photographers of his era was this search for the proper place of individuals in the society, that is his existential point-of-view and what separates him from other existentialist photographers is the use of geometry to define this place.
Sources:
Green, Jonathan, 1983, “Straight Shooting in the Sixties”, American Photography – A Critical History 1954 to the Present, New York, Abrams, p.105-110
Meyerowitz, Joel. Westerbeck, Colin, 1994, Bystander: A History of Street Photography, Bulfinch Press
Lee Friedlander. Website:
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/F/friedlander/friedlander_articles2.html (accessed: June 15, 2008)
Siegel, Lee, 2005, “What Makes Lee Friedlander's Pictures Good?), Slate Magazine, Website:
http://www.slate.com/id/2122535/ (accessed: June 15 2008)
(i)Meyerowitz, Joel. Westerbeck, Colin, 1994, Bystander: A History of Street Photography, Bulfinch Press
(ii)Green, Jonathan, 1983, “Straight Shooting in the Sixties”, American Photography – A Critical History 1954 to the Present, New York, Abrams, p.106
Şuna da dikkati çekmek istiyorum, kentsel dönüşüm projeleri hem azınlıkların oturduğu yerlere yapılıyor. Sulukule'de Romanlar, Tarlabaşı'nda Romanlar ve travestiler, Ayazma'da terörden kaçıp gelmiş Kürtler, Balat'da Yahudiler...
bilelim, hiç olmazsa farkında olalım.
Cindy Sherman wanted to make her statement about the male gaze and the role of women into the art. She was interested in the use of women in the male fantasies and the ways these are transferred to the art. Cinema is the medium that concludes every use of women and women body; visually, written and sociologically through the story, hallucinatory or imaginary, starting from the fantastic figures -either classical fairies or Science-Fiction 'creatures-, until even the fairy-tales (which will form the base of her 'modern interpretation of Cinderella, in her self-portrait titled “Cinderella”. ).
By not directly looking at the camera, Cindy Sherman forms an uncanny feeling, which is unusual for Portrait or Self-Portrait Photography, and refer to the passive female role by not even being able to look directly to the camera. In this way, she points out the relation between camera and women. Also, her glances to the Off-Screen space often have some meanings that the viewer cannot easily explain. In 'Untitled Film Still #13' and 'Untitled Film Still #3', her glances seems unnatural, because by looking to that direction with her posture is making the chance of her seeing what she wants to see lower. For example, in 'Untitled Film Still #13' , she has to move to the right to be able to have a good view of what she is looking. Also, the viewer can never have a change to know what she is looking to, because of the fact that there is no indication into the frame to point to something in Off-Screen, but also we know through cinematic conventions that because she isn't looking to the camera, we cannot see in another shot her subjective Point-Of View. This and the uncanniness created by how she is looking to the Off-Screen space forms the 'punctum' in the photographs, in order to form another cliché women characteristics; the mystery of women. We cannot know what she is looking at, and we cannot know why she is looking that way. Everything seems posed and unrealistic, even though we may accept this shot as a reality, if it were showed in a film.THE REAL MIGRANT MOTHER: THE ALTERATION OF REALITY IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF DOROTHEA LANGE
1. The story of the 'Migrant Mother'
In the March of 1936, Dorothea Lange photographed Florence Owens Thompson to portray the famous 'Migrant Mother' photography series. In that time, she was working for the Resettlement Administration -later to become Farm Security Administration- and she was taking photographs to drew the attention of the society to the situation of agricultural workers in the Depression Era and to prove the point of the current governmental policy. The photograph immediately raised a lot of public attention, as well as the attention of the government officials who provided food, jobs and doctors for the Pea-Pickers Camp in Nipomo, California. Despise all these attention on the photography, Lange explained little about the “heroine” of the photograph, who would be seen in a new light after 1970's when Thompson herself chose to reveal her true story.
The “object” of the photograph in artistic photography often have little importance on explaining and understanding the work at hand, but in situations like these, when the object is an objectified person, the story of that person can provide new focuses to criticize the work itself.
Lange only provided little information on the 'Migrant Mother':
“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. (i)
The real story of the 'Migrant Mother' contradicts with the facts giving by Lange. Florence Owen Thompson was a 32 year old Cherokee Native-American, who had to work in temporary agricultural camps, after the death of her first husband, with seven kids at the moment that the photo was taken, and with Jim Hill who joined the family a year ago and took the role of husband and father (though they never legally got married). The source of the story that Lange told later in the 1960 about them selling their tires to buy food and further information is unknown and mostly false as Jim Hill and her oldest son ,Troy Owens, just went to the town to find some auto parts, because their car was broken and they went later that day to another camp in Watsonville. Even the time given by Lange is wrong by one month, according to the record Thompson and her children gave later to various newspapers. For years, people believed that aside being an iconic photograph of the era, the photograph saved Thompson's life, because soon after, food, shelter and work were given to the families in the pea-pickers camp, but in fact, the Thompson family left the camp before the aids arrived.
2. The Surrealism of the Photograph and the Social Documentary- Reading the Photograph with Susan Sontag's 'Melancholy Objects'
Susan Sontag defines photography as the medium which duplicates the reality dramatically: they change the quality and situation of certain object with the creation of a composition, therefore every photograph is surrealist by nature (ii). The series of 'Migrant Mother' is perhaps one of the best situation that can characterize this definition. From the knowledge gathered from Thompson herself and her family members, one can see that the situation that Lange created about her – the poor mother of the hungry children, a victim of the Depression Era, a passive and sorrowful woman- is an illusion. In fact, Thompson was a very proud woman who works hard through her life not to give away her children and become dependent to other people for help and she was also an activist and organizer of farmer strikes. Beside her strong personality, according to her children, she was also a happy woman who love to have fun, even though her life was a very hard one:
"Mother was a woman who loved to enjoy life, who loved her children," said, she loved music and she loved to dance. (iii)
This description is contrary to the woman who was transform into the most known and powerful icon of the FSA's propaganda. That's also a fact that she resented this photograph and her portrayal like a victim through her life as she confessed in her letter to the newspaper. But even today, her image in the society is the one created by Lange. This brings the question of the immortality of the photograph that Sontag writes about in 'Melancholy Objects'. As soon as a photograph of someone is taken, this photograph make the person immortal and, in this situation, change her status and appearance in the history: transform her into a 'Melancholy Object'. Like Sontag stated in 'Melancholy Objects': “In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past but the one who invents it.” (iv)
This aspect bring the question of reality in documentary photography. American Social Documentary style came to dominance in an era when photographs were still considered mostly as documents; as the truth itself. Therefore, in the era that this photographs, among many other photographs by FSA's photographers, were taken, they were considered as the absolute truth and the manipulation that the photographer may have done in the photographs, either by framing or posing the models, where never thought or discussed. But, with the contemporary point of view about the status of photography and documentary, we can know see that Lange in fact altered the real life of Thompson and even created a fictional story for her, convenient to her and FSA's aim. On the other hand, Lange and other major photographers worked for FSA also considered that even having a style is inconvenient to the social documentary. In the position of these photographs as art objects, this would not cause a problem, but in their position in the era -and the position given by their photographer- as the documents of the reality, this is a big problematic area in the ethics of photography.
3. The Melancholy Objects and their Ethical Rights
The fight that Florence Owens Thompson and her children gave against the photograph of Lange shows the problem of ethics in documentary photography; first of all, in Lange's photograph, Thompson was portrayed as someone else who she later declared her resentment against. The other ethical problem about the way of taking this photograph is Lange's approach towards her. She didn't regard her as an individual human being; as an American citizen who has the right not to be photographed -especially in her vulnerable situation- which will later become an article of Human Rights. For her, she was the proof of the poverty caused by the Big Depression; she was a 'melancholy object'. According to Sontag again, the tendency of social documentary in America is only the 'class tourism' (v) of the bourgeoisie; of the middle class. Though in her account of the instance Lange explained: “There she... seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality” (vi), the situation didn't present any equality at all. Lange was the middle-class photographer and 'a well-dressed woman... with a large camera' who came with 'a shiny new car' (vii) and Thompson was the poor and helpless migrant mother. Lange didn't ask her name, therefore she stayed nameless for the history for a long time; she wasn't a person, she was a mere propaganda object. According to Thompson's letter to the editor, Lange promised her that the photographs will never be published and only used to improve the situation of the camp and its inhabitants. At this point, Lange saw no problem in lying to Thompson or transforming her into an anonymous icon. She was from now on the icon of poverty and helplessness of migrant workers in America. Although a lot of people found courage and dignity in her presence, with the title giving by Lange, she was stripped of her dignity.
Along with the other photographs of the series, the photograph that brings the question of ethics the most is the third photograph titled "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32. Father is a native Californian."
In the conventional photography as well as the cinema, women have two major roles; women as sexual object and women as mother. One is created by the patriarchate norms to feed the fetishism of the spectator, while the other one is a continued tradition of the 'Madonna' in Christian belief. These two strictly different roles never come together, therefore the breast-feeding is a 'sacred' activity, no matter how open the art is, it stays as a taboo to show a woman breast-feeding, because breasts are sexual objects by nature, but breast-feeding is considered as 'sacred' almost as 'divine'. This photo that shows Thompson breast-feeding takes away all her privacy and put her in an extremely vulnerable position, especially through the moral codes of the society of the era. In the 30's -even today- a naked woman breast is considered as eroticism or pornography in photography and cinema, placing that woman in an 'unmoral' position. The only exception of this moral code is in photographing the tribal topless women in Africa. This exception doesn't present any moral or traditional problem, because, first of all, being topless is considered normal on their own tradition; so even though they can be threated as sexual objects by the spectator, it's not an exploitation of women according to the Western Civilization and the photographer can protect himself from these accusations by simply saying that he just documented the situation. On the other hand, this is not exploitation, because for the spectator of these photographs, they are not individual persons, but exotic commodities. The photographer therefore only portray and introduce these exotic commodities; so the spectator can know about them.
In Lange's photographs, Thompson is also an exotic commodity, an unknown to the middle class Americans, therefore portraying her with naked breasts caused no ethical problem for Lange. But for the critics today, seeing a human being like an exotic commodity who she can use according to her propagandist purpose and violate her personal rights cause a problem. In the turbulent atmosphere of the Depression Era, this was not yet a problem to discuss, but today photography critics see the Social Documentary era in a new light and can study Lange's methods and purpose more freely.
Sources:
Sontag, Susan, 2002 (1977), “Melancholy Objects”, On Photography, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, p. 52
Lange, Dorothea, February 1960 “The Assignment I'll Never Forget: Migrant Mother,” Popular Photography
Sprague, Roger, Sr., “The Migrant Mother: The Story as told by her Grandson”, Web site: http://www.migrantgrandson.com/ (accessed: March 18 2008)
Natanson, Barbara O., "Exploring Contexts: Migrant Mother" in American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States. Web site: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/migrant_mother.html (accessed: March 18 2008)
Dunn, Geoffrey, "Photographic License." New Times: San Luis Obispo (2002)
i, vi Lange, Dorothea, February 1960 “The Assignment I'll Never Forget: Migrant Mother,” Popular Photography
ii Sontag, Susan, 2002 (1977), “Melancholy Objects”, On Photography, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, p. 52
iii Geoffrey Dunn, “Photographic License,” San Jose Metro, January 19-25, 1995, p. 22
iv Sontag, Susan, 2002 (1977), “Melancholy Objects”, On Photography, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux,p. 67
v For more information on class tourism, see Sontag, Susan, 2002 (1977), “Melancholy Objects”, On Photography, New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, p.54-68
vii Roger Srague, Sr., “The Migrant Mother: The Story as told by her Grandson”, http://www.migrantgrandson.com/
