See the same photo over at the Online Archive of California (host of the Dorothea Lange Collection, 1919-1965).

“Included in the museum’s archive are approximately 2,500 prints and over 2,000 negatives by Lange dated from 1935 to 1939 when she worked for the Resettlement Administration (RA) and the Farm Security Administration (FSA). […] In the summer of 1935, Lange transferred from SERA to the newly formed Resettlement Administration (RA), established in May 1935 by the executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his New Deal. The RA.s mandate was to ease the nation.s rural poverty through programs that included low-interest loans to farmers, land-renewal projects, and the resettlement and rehabilitation of the rural poor. Lange was hired as the only photographer investigator to work for the western regional office in Berkeley and on national assignments as designated. Concurrently, Taylor was appointed as a regional labor advisor in the same office. Together they were responsible for a five-state region including California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico , and Utah.” (more).

“Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.” (learn more about Dorothea Lange on Wikipedia).

Compare Lange’s photo with this photo by French photographer Raymond Depardon (from his book Errance, 2000)

Wikimedia Commons: Bomb in Wall Street, 1920

“The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 p.m. on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of New York City. The blast killed 38 and seriously injured 143. It was more deadly than the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910 and remained the deadliest bomb attack on U.S. soil until the Bath School bombings in Bath Township, Michigan seven years later.

At noon, a wagon passed by lunchtime crowds on Wall Street in New York City and stopped across the street from the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street, on the Financial District’s busiest corner. Inside, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (230 kg) of heavy, cast-iron sash weights exploded in a timer-set detonation, sending the slugs tearing through the air. The horse and wagon were blasted into small fragments. The 38 victims, most of whom died within moments of the blast, were mostly young and worked as messengers, stenographers, clerks and brokers. It caused over $2 million in property damage and wrecked most of the interior spaces of the Morgan building.” (wikipedia)

“Long before modern icon libraries like Helveticons, designers and sign-makers were forced to use a mishmash of symbols. Until the Helvetica man came along… — By 1974, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) realized the problem of using inconsistent symbols and commissioned the AIGA to produce a standard set for the Interstate Highway System, resulting in Symbol Signs. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Helvetica’ of pictograms (or specifically the Helvetica Man as coined by Ellen Lupton, and interviewed by Designer Observer), the project gave us the most common pictograms we see today. […] The AIGA team (which consisted of Thomas Geismar, Seymour Chwast, Rudolph de Harak, John Lees, and Massimo Vignelli) worked with designers Roger Cook and Don Shanosky to study the various pictogram systems in use around the world at the time, drawing inspiration from airports, train stations, and the Olympic Games.

A set of 34 symbols was published in 1974, receiving one of the first Presidential Design Awards. In 1979, 16 more symbols were added, creating a total of 50. Over the years, the symbols have become a standard in wayfinding, resulting in a set of icons we see and recognize on a daily basis (like the popular restroom and no smoking signs).

The copyright-free symbols, available for download from AIGA’s website, were released in the public domain and can be used by anyone without license.” (read more).

Original caption: “Mounting Timber Wolf-Burlap, saturated in liquid plaster of paris is used to cover skeleton to form a base or armature on which to model in clay.”

The Fight, Norman Mailer, 1975

“There are sporting events that transcend the world of sports, and the 1974 heavyweight title fight in which Muhammad Ali regained his crown by improbably kayoing George Foreman in the middle of the African night was certainly one of them. Metaphorically, it was a writer’s dream: two imposing black warriors, one all grace, the other brute force, one the iconoclast, the other the blind patriot, battling each other. Fatefully, the appropriate writer threw his pen into the ring. Norman Mailer’s masterful account goes far beyond the ropes to capture the primal ethos of the sport, the larger social canvas this particular fight was drawn on, and the remarkable cast of personalities—not the least of which is Mailer himself—who converged to make this “Rumble in the Jungle” a landmark in sports history and a clear knockout in Mailer’s journalistic portfolio.” (Amazon)

Previously on Skandalon

From the book: “The photographic lens is an instrument of great precision, but it does not discriminate between the essential and the unessential, and so when the lens is used un such a way as to give clear definition of detail where it is wanted, there is often equally claer definition of detail where it is not wanted. The lens does not create lines and wrinkles and blemishes on the face, but it merely reproduces them when they are and makes these unimportant details just as prominent as the important ones. Therefore it is sometimes necessary to subdue such imperfections or to remove them entirely by means of the knife or the pencil.”

This book is freely available online via the Internet Archive

It made me think about many comments I read lately related to a photo by Richard Avedon showing numerous and detailed instructions to his printer (follow this link to see both the original and the instructions). Similar comments can be found on Errol Morris’ blog (see for example his seven-part series about The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock and, more recently, his two-part series It Was All Started by a Mouse; Errol Morris’ analyses are a must read). They all revolved around the same topic : the truthfullness or honesty of the photographic medium (and, by extension, of the photographer’s work). On the same subject, Eva Baines wrote a short piece on “An Abbreviated History of Photo-Manipulation” (Jan. 24th, 2009) reminding the reader about Dorothea Lange’s manipulation of “The Migrant Mother” (1936).

Conscientious is Jörg Colberg’s weblog about fine-art photography (and more).

“The Czech photographer Josef Koudelka belongs to the tradition of street photography that begins with Cartier-Bresson and Brassai. It is a genre of images snatched from chance encounters with passing strangers, seen against urban backdrops and preserved in memorable form. But for a few days in August 1968, Mr. Koudelka practiced a rarer, more precarious form of street photography, taking pictures inside history, where little is clear, and nothing is still.”

Previously on Skandalon