Library assignment and a Pre-library assignment

Pre-library Assignment

Art 150 sec 01

Your first name and last name

Your email address

Instructor: Nancy Yakimoski

October 17, 2017

working idea of the essay topic (working thesis statement)

This essay examines iconic photography to demonstrate the ways this type of image functions

in our society—in the historical moment when it was taken—as well as its afterlife in popular

culture, including the fine arts. Leading scholars in the field of iconic photography, Robert

Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, will be used to describe and discuss this genre.

The iconic Depression-era photograph, “Migrant Mother” (1936) by Dorothea Lange will be

examined in its original context and use. Lange took this photograph of Florence Thompson

while on assignment for the Farm Security Administration which was part of President

Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration. It was originally published in the San Francisco News

as a way to legitimize government expenditures to help those people hit hard by the

Depression. This essay will examine how and why the image became iconic.

The second part of the essay explores how iconic images, and this one in particular, has been

adapted by others and re-contextualized for other purposes. One examination is within the

context of fine art. In the late 1980s, American artist Kathy Grove began "The Other Series"

where she would remove female figures from photographs of famous pieces of art using bleach,

dyes, and airbrushing. With "Migrant Mother" she airbrushed it to look like a Calvin Klein ad.

The message of her work was to equate her removal of women and their achievements with the

way that historians and culture has erased women and their achievements.

Title: “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo,

California” Other Title: “Migrant Mother”

Photographer: Dorothea Lange

Negative size: 4" x5" Date Created/Published: 1936 Feb. or Mar.

Library of Congress Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516 Image source (Library of Congress) http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/

Title: “After Lange, 1989-90”

Series: The Other Series, 1989-90 Photographer: Kathy Grove

Medium: digitally enhanced photo; gelatin silver print 19 x 18 in. (48.3 x 45.7 cm.)

Image source (Art net): http://www.artnet.com/artists/kathy- grove/the-other-series-after-lange-50aXA8GzHJZ1dKUdakejXw2

Bibliography

Curtis, James C. “Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression.” Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, 21 (Spring 1986): 1-20.

Hariman, Robert and John Louis Lucaites. “The Borders of the Genre; Migrant Mother

and the Times Square Kiss.” No Caption Needed. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Isaak, Jo Anna. Feminism and Contemporary Art. London and New York: Routledge,

1996. "Lange, Dorothea." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. [accessed Sept. 16, 2017]. Lenman, Robin. "Migrant Mother." The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Oxford

University Press, 2005. [accessed Sept. 10, 2017] Library of Congress. “Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother.” Photographs in the Farm

Security Administration Collection: An Overview.” [accessed Sept. 14, 2017]. http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. New York: Harry N. Abrams,

2002. Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Collection Online. "Kathy Grove." [accessed: Oct. 14,

2017]. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection online/search/294328?=&imgno=0&tabname=related-objects

"Ragged, Hungry, Broke, Harvest Workers Live in Squaller." San Francisco News,

March 10, 1936. Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography, 4th ed. New York: Abbeville Press

Publishers, 2007. "What Does the 'New Deal' Mean to This Mother and Her Children?" San Francisco

News, Mar. 11, 1936. Wood, Deborah. "Art and Transformation." Issues in Integrative Studies 16 (1998): 57–

71.