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Close Comparison -- Compare and Contrast
Comparison of Solomon-Godeau and Williams
Photography is an ethically complex art: unlike a painting which purports to be the work of an individual artist and reaffirm his or her 'true self,' a photograph at least superficially suggests that it has encapsulated 'the real.' The impression of reality conveyed by photography is so persuasive that the fact that a photograph is still one interpretation amongst many may be forgotten. "For Solomon-Godeau, looking at social subjects is voyeuristic, creating contradictions that course through the entire history of documentary photography. In its parasitism on the real and self-justification in the name of consciousness-raising, the genre always risks reducing the 'objective' record of human misery to aesthetic spectacle" (Apter 1992: 693). An excellent example of such reduction are the infamous photographs of Walter Evans of the 'Okies' during the Dust Bowl era of the America 1930s or modern photography today of war zones. The individual becomes reduced to a symbol of the tragedy of humanity. Thus, according to Solomon-Godeau, photography "seductively promises to show what is there, a promise that implicitly inducts the viewer into an ideologically blinding...
Thus she endeavors to work out a somewhat perverse counter-strategy of 'not to show,' or 'not to read'" (Apter 1992: 693). For African-Americans, this is a particularly important question, given that images of 'blackness' are often used to represent 'the race' in a schematic fashion, as seen through the white gaze.
However, the collection of African-American photography by Debra Willis, rather than attempting 'not to show' or 'not to read' offers a different view of photography and its tendency to objectify. Willis and the contributors to her volume Picturing Us: African-American Identity in Photography instead explores the ability to 'reread' photographs from the past. Rather than distilling photographs of their assigned meanings and questioning the value of the visual to render 'the real,' Willis asked contributors to her volume to instead reinterpret famous photographs from the African-American past, such as those of anonymous lynched men and famous activists such as Marcus Garvey, in a manner in which they had not been previously.
In the essay, "The Erotic Image is Naked and Dark," essayist Carla Williams actively seeks to reclaim the body of the hyper-sexualized Black woman into the realm…
Bibliography
Apter, Emily. Review of Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions
and Practices by Abigail Solomon-Godeau. The Art Bulletin, 74.4 (Dec., 1992): 692-694.
Hill & Adamson, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Rejlander, Robinson, and P.H. Emerson.
Figures of early art photography.
Dust Bowl Bibliography Annotated Bibliography Bonnifield, Matthew Paul. The Dust Bowl: Men Dirt and Depression. University of New Mexico Press, 1979. A journalist named Robert Geiger first coined the term Dust Bowl in the 1930s, which was a decade of extreme droughts, blizzards, tornadoes, dust storms and other climatic changes. Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and other Plains states bore the brunt of this drought, and Dr. Bonnifield lived through it at the time.
Although the 1930s as a whole for all farmers were marked by dramatic periods of "boom and bust," for the residents of the Triangle, the periods of "boom" were far shorter and crueler (McNeill 40). Indeed, when "Captain John Palliser first reached the prairies he was said he thought he had "discovered Hell" because the region was so arid and desert-like. Still, Palliser noted "a fertile belt surrounding the
They are used for the same reasons farmers depleted the soils in Oklahoma in the 1930s, which was to produce a surplus of crops in the hopes of making bigger profits. Many of those consequences are long-term and might not be noticeable for at least one generation into the future. I think the Dust Bowl situation is interesting because the consequences of poor farming practices did take many decades to
S. history. He has held teaching appointments at Brandeis University, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Maine. He serves on the boards of several environmental organizations. His publications include An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American West (1994); The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (1993); Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977); and A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley
Journal Reflections on a Dust Bowl Tale Out of the Dust -- the Depression in Adolescent Poetry It is difficult to think of this work as too dark for young individuals, even middle school children, because of its emotional truth and absence of sensationalism. It is written in the poetic voice of an articulate young women about concerns many young people face in real life, namely that of death of a loved
Environmental Themes in Grapes of Wrath This essay reviews environmental themes from the following five books: Dust Bowl by Donald Worster, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Killing Mr. Watson by Peter Matthiessen, and River of Lakes by Bill Belleville. This paper discusses the role that culture has played in environmental issues during the past century. Five sources used. MLA format. Environmental Themes Humans