Ben Shahn Research Articles

Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America 1890-1950

The documentary style that dominates American photography had its origins in the social reform publicity campaigns of the turn of the century. This book traces the history of this genre and its main participants, including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Russell Lee.

Ben Shahn: New Deal artist in a cold war climate, 1947-1954

Ben Shahn: New Deal artist in a cold war climate, 1947-1954

Documenting America, 1935-1943

Between 1935 and 1943, a group of photographers under the direction of Roy Emerson Stryker set out to photograph the United States for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. Photographs taken by this celebrated group, whose ranks included Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Gordon Parks, Russell Lee and Walker Evans, have since become icons of the 1930s and 1940s. In recent years, however, their work has been reproduced with little discussion of the particular circumstances surrounding its creation. Documenting takes a fresh look at these remarkable photographs. The book opens with two incisive essays by Lawrence Levine and Alan Trachtenberg that examine issues central to photography and American culture. While Levine explains how the pictures portray the complexity of life in the period, balancing scenes of Depression hard times with images of the pleasures of life, Trachtenberg analyzes the way in which viewers read photographs and the role of the government picture file that stands between the creation of the photographs and their use. Both essayists raise important questions about Stryker's grand ambition of a photographic record of America, about the 'ways of seeing' that have grown up around the most famous of these photographs, and about the whole enterprise of documentary photography and the conventions of realism. The images themselves are presented in series selected from groups of pictures created by single photographers. A documentary photographer often makes dozens of exposures to portray different elements of the subject, experiment with camera angles, and cover the stages of an event or steps of a process. By studying these pictures in series, we come closer to the photographer working in the field. We see a tenant farming community in Gee's Bend, Georgia, the activities of the Salvation Army in San Francisco, and the hubbub and commotion that filled Chicago's Union Railway Station in 1943. Texts accompanying each of the book's fifteen series describe the circumstances that gave rise to the creation of the pictures and discuss the relation between government policy and the subjects of the photographs. The nearly three hundred images included vividly portray America in the last bitter years of the Great Depression and the first years of the Second World War.

A Kentucky Album: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1943 , and: Eastern Kentucky: A Pictorial History (review)

A Kentucky Album: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1943. Beverly W. Brannan and David Horvath, editors. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1986. Hardback in dust jacket, $25.00. Eastern Kentucky: A Pictorial History. Stuart Sprague, compiler and editor. Norfolk, Virginia: The Donning Company, 1986. Hardback with dust jacket, $25.00. Photographs have the potential to communicate directly and strongly to us in ways that other media of communication do not. Perhaps it is their ability to evoke a reality that is necessarily of a different time and place, richly detailed and motionless, that gives them the potential to intrigue and excite us in ways that are not completely explainable. If a photograph makes full use of the medium's potential , it transcends the boundaries of the two dimensional print and takes us, visually and intellectually, if not emotionally and metaphysically, into another time and place. Sometimes this reality reminds us of things we knew or thought we knew, but sometimes photographs tell us of new things and give us new information and knowledge. The success of a photograph in doing these things depends upon the skills of the photographer—not only technical but aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual . Two recent publications show us how photographs can vary in the extent to which they realize these potentials. The first, A Kentucky Album: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1943, wonderfully illustrates the strengths of photographs as a powerful medium of communication. The University Press of Kentucky book reproduces a selection of 129 images taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers between 1935 and 1943. The FSA photographic survey was one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. Over 140,000 photographs were taken in all parts of the country by skilled photographers. Those working in Kentucky included Ben Shahn, John Vachon, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott. The editors, Beverly Brannan and David Horvath, have made an intelligent and sensitive selection of images for the book. The organization of the book is by broad topics which reflects the concepts of the original project: rural life, religious customs, education, social gatherings, cities and towns, transportation, coal mining, and the homefront. The photographs are arranged one to a page and sized approximately 6" ? 8". The clean, sensitive design together with excellent half tone reproductions allows the images to speak to us strongly and clearly. They show us where Kentucky has been and how much has changed while at the same time how little has changed. This paradox is one of Kentucky 's strengths as well as one of its weaknesses. The photographs engage one so strongly they create a disorientation of time. Is this a recent photo that shows us something that has changed little in the past 45 years or has the photo taken us back 45 years by communicating so well essential elements of Kentucky? An excellent foreword by Jim Wayne Miller helps us make sense of these issues and shows us how the photographs "help us to understand who we are and who we might yet be by showing us who—not so long ago—we were." The second book, Eastern Kentucky: A Pictorial History by Stuart Sprague is far less successful in its ability to inform and educate, much less excite and stimulate. The work operates under a number of inherent handicaps compared to A Kentucky Album. It did not begin with one body of systematically produced photographs, its time span is much greater (1750 to the present, although the latest photograph is dated 1980), the quality of the original photographs varies and is not a consistently 60 high quality. However, the work further handicaps itself by an extremely poor layout and design which is cluttered, unappealing and confusing. Multiple colored inks are used on the same page, typefaces are mixed, and photographs are improperly sized, being either too small and crowded on the page or too large requiring a double page spread with the resultant distraction and loss of image in the book gutter. A most serious problem is the very poor quality of reproduction. This causes a loss of information in the images and does not permit them to realize their full potential. A number of...

Plain Pictures of Plain Doctoring: Vernacular Expressions in New Deal Medicine and Photography

To anyone with an interest in the history of what we now refer to as primary care medicine, a subject that has received far too little attention, this beautifully compiled volume will be most welcome. Seldom have I read a book that has moved me more than this collection of photographs that portray average American physicians at work in the last years of the Depression. Small wonder that the photographs are moving, for they were taken by some of the greatest photographers of that era, including Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange. What adds so much to this book, however, is something not often seen with photo collections. The explanatory text that places the pictures and their times in an artistic, social, and economic context has itself a lyrical quality. Whether used to document or to reform, to illustrate or to entertain, the power of

Interview: Ben Shahn Talks with Forrest Selvig

Previous articleNext article No AccessInterview: Ben Shahn Talks with Forrest SelvigBen Shahn and Forrest SelvigBen Shahn Search for more articles by this author and Forrest Selvig Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 17, Number 31977 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.17.3.1556844 Views: 7Total views on this site Copyright 1977 Archives of Amer. ArtPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Shahn & Shahn, by Margaret R. Weiss

Review| February 01 1976 Shahn & Shahn, by Margaret R. Weiss Ben Shahn, Photographer: An Album from the Thirties Edited, with an Introduction by Margaret R. Weiss Da Capo Press/82 plates/&9.95 (hb)The Photographic Eye of Ben Shahn Edited by Davis Pratt Harvard University Press/147 pp./$15.00 (hb) William Stott William Stott William Stott, the author of Documentary Expression and Thirties America, teaches at the University of Texas. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (1976) 3 (8): 16. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1976.3.8.16 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William Stott; Shahn & Shahn, by Margaret R. Weiss. Afterimage 1 February 1976; 3 (8): 16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1976.3.8.16 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1976 by The Regents of the University of California1976 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Paintings and Personalities

Four painters, Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Raphael Soyer, and Ben Shahn, had much in common but their works and personalities were very different. All were born between 1882 and 1899 outside New York and spent most of their lives in that city. All had some formal art training but soon developed independent characteristic styles, representational rather than abstract. None belonged to any definite school. All were successful in terms of financial rewards, inclusion in exhibits, and prizes. And now, each has been the subject of a handsome volume that reproduces much of his work. Lloyd Goodrich, former director of the Whitney Museum, who knew them all, wrote the text of three of these books, while Shahn's widow, herself an artist, wrote about him. Hopper (1882-1967) often painted man-made structures—New England houses, city apartments, lighthouses, trains, boats, and bridges. In his few landscapes, the center of interest is often a road,

Paintings and personalities

Four painters, Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Raphael Soyer, and Ben Shahn, had much in common but their works and personalities were very different. All were born between 1882 and 1899 outside New York and spent most of their lives in that city. All had some formal art training but soon developed independent characteristic styles, representational rather than abstract. None belonged to any definite school. All were successful in terms of financial rewards, inclusion in exhibits, and prizes. And now, each has been the subject of a handsome volume that reproduces much of his work. Lloyd Goodrich, former director of the Whitney Museum, who knew them all, wrote the text of three of these books, while Shahn's widow, herself an artist, wrote about him. Hopper (1882-1967) often painted man-made structures—New England houses, city apartments, lighthouses, trains, boats, and bridges. In his few landscapes, the center of interest is often a road,

Living Mythically: The Thirties

In May 1932 the Museum of Modern Art opened on 53rd Street in New York in an old mansion. A number of artists associated widi New Masses, the leftist magazine founded in 1925, showed a collection of political murals sharply commenting on die economic imbalance and social cruelty of the times. Hugo Gellert's mural was entided ‘Us fellas gotta stick together’, a phrase drawn from an already notorious conversation between a young member of die wealthy Vanderbilt family, who had obtained a reporting job on a Hearst newspaper, and his equally rich interviewee, Al Capone, then in gaol. Capone, as usual, knew die score and told die young capitalist inheritor: ‘Us fellas gotta stick togedier.‘ Gellert's mural neatly encapsulated the Hearst-gangsterdom axis, since the centre of corruption, then as now, in America was die interlocking of business and crime. Naturally, President Hoover, Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan and J. D. Rockefeller found die exhibition offensive since diey were die ‘fellas’ in die mural with Capone. Another picture, by the great political artist, Ben Shahn, showed figures in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and one by William Gropper, another fine political artist, showed J. P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon, a couple of notorious millionaires, eating tickertape with two pigs, and protected by militiamen. The Gropper was entitled, with little subdety, but quite accurately, ‘The Writing on the Wall’.

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn

BOOKSHOP: HEBREW BOOKS, HOLY DAY BOOKS by BEN SHAHN, American Contemporary

BOOKSHOP: HEBREW BOOKS, HOLY DAY BOOKS by BEN SHAHN, American Contemporary

A European Artist Sees American Painting

The most prevailing trends in contemporary American paintings are nonobjective or abstract and expressionistic abstract. William de Kooming, for example, seems to me an important representative of the former movement. So are Hilla Rebay, Leatrice Rose and Seong Moy. In the other group, the expressionistic abstract painters, I consider among others Cusumano, Adler, Knaths, Kuniyoshi, Burlin, and Ben Shahn, as representative. In Europe there are also numerable nonobjective artists, but mostly belonging to the older generation. Fifteen to twenty years ago most young European artists painted in the abstract or nonobjective manner. But with the younger generation of today, we see a different trend—expressionistic abstract. This is different from the expressionism of the period right after World War 1. This new form has much more organization, and that, to me, is the important lesson of the abstract painters. The value of the pure abstract art is recognized today by the expressionistic abstract painters. In most western European countries one finds this trend generally prevailing. It seems to me that in America, contrary to Europe, the younger generation is still working in the pure abstract or nonobjective manner. However, as I said before, the expressionistic abstract movement is important too.

A European Artist Sees American Painting

The most prevailing trends in contemporary American paintings are nonobjective or abstract and expressionistic abstract. William de Kooming, for example, seems to me an important representative of the former movement. So are Hilla Rebay, Leatrice Rose and Seong Moy. In the other group, the expressionistic abstract painters, I consider among others Cusumano, Adler, Knaths, Kuniyoshi, Burlin, and Ben Shahn, as representative. In Europe there are also numerable nonobjective artists, but mostly belonging to the older generation. Fifteen to twenty years ago most young European artists painted in the abstract or nonobjective manner. But with the younger generation of today, we see a different trend—expressionistic abstract. This is different from the expressionism of the period right after World War 1. This new form has much more organization, and that, to me, is the important lesson of the abstract painters. The value of the pure abstract art is recognized today by the expressionistic abstract painters. In mos...

The Correlation of Literature and the Fine Arts

In Too many of our schools today, the various acts and achievements of man through the ages are taught separately, as though each were a unique accident. A student might at one time be studying Egypt in his history class, Victor Hugo in his French class, Shakespeare in his English literature class, and how to draw bittersweet in a vase in his art class—or, if his art department is “advanced,” how to appreciate Picasso and poured-concrete bridges. Another month he may be occupying himself with Medieval history, Voltaire, Steinbeck, and Michelangelo. And another month with the French Revolution, Andre Gide, Chaucer, and Ben Shahn.

Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn