Walker Evans

Documentary projects

The Great Depression, which began with the stock market crash of 1929 and lasted for the next decade, was a time of desperation and disorientation in America. In an effort to bring the country back on its feet, President Roosevelt initiated the Farm Security Administration (FSA) project. Photographers were hired and sent across the United States to document Americans living in poverty, and Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans were two of those photographers that were sent out. Along with their partners Paul S. Taylor and James Agee they started their projects which were approached through two different methods. Agee and Evans project Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Lange and Taylor’s project An American exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, are two similar, though different types of work. Both projects are of the poor tenant farmers in the south and the sharecroppers living during the Great Depression during the 1930s. The first difference I noticed is the way the pictures are presented in the two projects. By this I mean how they are taken and how Evans and Lange chose which ones that were to be included in the books. A second difference is that Agee and Taylor had two different writing techniques and these are the biggest differences between the two books.

Despite the similarities in the two texts presented by the authors and photographers, their work is presented in two various ways. Agee and Evans project was done after living with three tenant families and Evans photographs are completely separate from Agees text. There are not any captions or names and they do not tell us where the photos are taken or who the people in the pictures are. Lange and Taylor’s project on the other hand is written in a way that helps us read the photographs and it is easier to see the connections between the text and pictures. The captions underneath the photos are based on words formulated by the people in the picture. However, the photos that do not have any people in them still have captions, but in this case we can assume that someone has told the photographer or author what to write for each photo. By this method the true meaning of how the turmoil during this period affected the people in question is more precisely illustrated because it includes the words uttered by the people themselves.

Both Lange and Evans are documentary photographers; they just had alternative styles of taking photos. They are both called documentary photographers and they took their pictures because of the social cause, to show what was wrong with the world, and to influence others to take action and make it right. They wanted to illustrate to society the changes that the Great Depression caused and how people were affected by it.

Dorothea Lange started taking photographs so she could document the misery of the American lower class. Lange wanted to make the lower class more visible so that she could encourage others to help. Dorothea Lange remained loyal to her principles by taking direct, unmanipulated footage of the social issues that were going on during the Great Depression. Lange tried to capture the image, but was more interested in the feeling and moods behind the image and the underlying connotation of the pictures. Lange’s main goal was to present her project to society in the true form that she observed the conditions and by this she wanted the portraits to reveal a deep understanding and sympathy towards her fellow human beings.

Together with her husband Paul S. Taylor they collaborated to make the book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. They tried to connect photographs, and text dealing with the causes and effects of this huge social disturbance with an added element: words they heard spoken by some of the people that were victims of the Great Depression. They did this to tell the story the way it actually was; how the people themselves felt and experienced the terrible times they lived in. The outcome of this is that we, the readers, get a clear meaning of what’s going on. We do not have to read into the photographs or text to much, it is clear and simple. I think they included the captions in the text to reflect how they wanted to portray the situation to the public. By having sentences spoken by the people in the photos, the project is more believable and authentic. Lange and Taylor completed the project through the eyes of the people affected by the Great Depression and not how they perceived the situation themselves.

The writing style of Paul S.Taylor is also very different from James Agee. Taylor’s way of writing differs because it is more straightforward and interesting; the language is simple and easier to comprehend. The writing style draws you in because the language is formulated in a