Here is that part of the image itself in some ways is without inherent meaning, some ways the photograph itself needs to be coded through captions, through the sort of articles next to it, through many other ideas like the readers own political persuasion. The image becomes largely meaningless until it becomes coded by the surrounding areas. In some ways, the image without a code needs a code, the context for understanding its meaning. So talks about the paradox of photography and particularly of press photography. The ways that constructed intentional meaning, the things that have opinions or political leanings, can seem natural and pregiven, thanks to the index of photography. Reminding what it means. Of course, you know, thinking back to our photograph right here. We know that there was a corpse hanging from a tree. Light reflects that body on to photographic film and we know that it was there. That idea of truth value, that factual quality of photography. In some ways makes the constructed meaning seem natural and pregiven. So hes really trying to think about this in terms of press photography. Here is the cuba photograph we referenced earlier, taken by the spy plane. Heres a different shot taken by a spy plane, but same idea. Cuban landscape with identifying missiles. What might roland bart say about the publication of this image in a newspaper . Lynn . It has the captions on it. It gives more meaning to the photograph and makes it seem scarier than it would be if you just saw it without the captions. The captions here tell us what to look for here. You know we see, the caption here identifies whats in here as well as the internal captions tells us what we are looking at. Anyone else . Yeah. Kind of adding to that, it gives context of like you said what were supposed to look for and the photo on the left kind of sort of tells what is going on. In the context of a whole newspaper article, you get more indepth of what we are supposed to look for and why this is a big deal and more background why people should be afraid of this photograph. Good. Going off of that, more so like what they want you to look for. The text lends this cultural and political ideas on the photograph that isnt there when you see it. So kind of like that propaganda and corruption, what they want you to get out of the photograph. Great. Thats right. Great points. The image perhaps saying nothing or says very little, it communicates little specifics to the reader. The captions whether internally here, the article over here, the political persuasion of the reader as well as the scientific looking quality of the photograph. It looks like a document. It looks like evidence. All these aspects lead us to sort of think about the photograph and its meaning. We read it as truth and as fact. Of course, it is a very ambiguous image. Im not arguing that there were missiles in cuba. To the untrained eye of the american public, this photograph actually tells you very little. If you are trained in interpreting aerial photographs, you could maybe see something. The vast majority of americans could not communicate these ideas of missiles and so on. I also want to talk a little bit too about how beyond roland bart, beyond his analysis of press photographs, images as are published in newspapers, the material print production of these photographs also leads them to be even more ambiguous. For two reasons. One we talked about. The half tone. Remember the half tone process we discussed . Many weeks ago, around the turn of the 20th century, how photographs can be converted to a screen of dots that could be mass printed by newspapers. Allowed for the mass publication of photographs in the press. Major watershed moment in photojournalism. The second thing i want to talk about which is new for us and we have not talked about this semester, the wire photo that allows photographs to be transmitted via radio wire. Im going to make this caption larger. It says, missile sight cuba. This is a copy made public by the u. S. Embassy in london and radioed to the u. S. They first got access to this image, its a long story i wont go why this is in london, but thats the first time this photograph emerged. They had to wire the photograph from london to new york to print it quickly and in the next days paper. They had a new process for this. Just a reminder before the wire photo was introduced and well talk about its history in a moment, that photographs had to be literally transported from the site of their production to the newspaper. Remember the photograph, the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, and it took four to five days to get the film from San Francisco to new york. Theres a significant delay in showing these images from San Francisco on the east coast. The film had to be put on a train to go across the country. The wire photo changes all of this. It was invented in 1907. As you see in the cover of Scientific American magazine. Not really made practical for widespread use until the 1930s. Didnt come into common use until the 1940s. Really becomes entrenched in our national and International Press during the cold war in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Actually used all the way up into the 1980s. I will read you the caption. Right here for this picture, this says, a photograph of the german crown prince. You see it here. Electronically transmitted to a distance of nearly 1,100 miles. The small picture from which the enlargement was made is the actual result obtained with the new method. The cover demonstrates this wire photo process. You see the results right here. Were going to watch a short video. This is a shorter excerpt from a longer clip from a news reel available on youtube. Its from 1937. From spot news. It gives the sense of how the wire photo works. Have a look. Although it took years to perfect, the technique of sending pictures by wire is comparatively simple. Its not a matter of sending the whole picture at once. But of separating the picture into fine lines, sending those lines over a wire and assembling them at the other end. Lets suppose we have a picture or a pattern which we want to send to another location. The only way to send it is through a small tube. For our purpose, we will make this picture on closely wound string. Now if we start at one end of the picture, taking it line by line, or string by string, in proper order, we can run the string through the tube and assemble it at the other end, line by line, until we again have the original pattern. That is exactly what we do in wired photo transmission. We now take the picture apart electrically, and translate it into units that we can send over a wire. The units are lines all of the same width but of different tones of gray. The video is longer online. I can send you the link. We see how wire photos work. The machine uses a lens, a light to break the photo down into lines of varying tonal levels. Then those lines are transmitted over a phone line via electronic pulse. The idea of lines are the tonal value are converted to a pulse. Then that pulse can be reconverted back to ideas of tonal values on the other side in the newsroom and you have a photograph transferred over long distances and be able to be printed in the newspaper quickly. Another way to think about this is you go from an image into a code, that pulses on the telephone line, and back into image. To bring back our diagram to remind us the image source and the actual wire photo process right here, of course, but it is a good image and you can see whats in it, but it still becomes much more blurry than a crisp silver, for instance, that we saw in the dorothy lang exhibition. We have this ambiguity at the heart of the wire photo process. It becomes standard after world war ii and in use until the 1980s. No longer in use today with digital technology. But it was so important to how americans as well as International Audiences understood the cold war through photographs. Any questions of the wire photo process . Very generally speaking. All right. To sum up this idea, we have a very blurry wire photo, a blurry half tone equals very blurry press imagery. Its a simple thing to say. But its important to remind ourselves that these images that were taken as fact, as conveying truth in history, were some of the most ambiguous images printed in the newspaper. Those really time sensitive, crucial news photographs were oftentimes the most ambiguous. Leads this idea about cold war photography, the need for truth and fact is undercut by this ambiguity of photography. Again, the press context. We think about newspapers as conveying truth and fact keeps down this ambiguity of the press photograph. Let me take a quick detour here and take a look at one painting. Andy warhol leads to a better understanding of the wire photo. In 1962 he made this painting right here, quite large, eight or nine feet long, copying the front of the new york mirror, this plane crash, and whats interesting is warhol is copying a wire photo. Warhol, such happenstance, marks his knowledge he knows hes painting a wire photo. Look at the caption right here. He doesnt really care about the narratives aspect of the caption. Only this little part of the caption right here, deletes most of the caption, but gives us this, says, upi radio telephoto. You know, hes marking the fact that this is a wire photo. Radio telephoto was upis branding of the wire photo process. So based on what we talked about with wire photos and newspapers, what is one way to interpret what warhol was suggesting about the press photograph here . Like why paint it . Its constructed like purposely. Like capture a photograph is structured purposely. It has a more intentional quality than a photograph. Perhaps revealing that aspect of press photography. Going off of that, takes away some of the factual inherent denotation that we associate with photography. Good. By painting it, it takes away the factual denotation we associate with a press photograph. What else . Thats exactly spot on right. The way warhol is calling attention to the ambiguity in the press photograph by painting it by hand. Yes, we can see whats going on here, but still, he renders it more ambiguous using like a sponge to create the background here. Sort of very block like figures. He reveals the ambiguity. Hiding within press photography. In some ways, we just saw this image right here. You might say its a plane wing. Probably would identify it as a plane wing. Kind of return to roland barts ideas, the headlines, 129 die in jet, tells us what we should be looking at here. It encodes that photograph to tell us what it is were supposed to be seeing. In barts terms that headline encodes the image. We can talk more about warhol. I wont here. I want to suggest, he is interested in ambiguity of press photography. Its one of the reasons he perhaps makes this painting right here. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the ways that even in art museums and perhaps the most important and most famous exhibition of photographs ever arguably sort of has the same mechanisms of trying to control and fix meanings in photograph. This opened at the museum of modern art in new york city in 1955. You see an installation shot here of the entrance to the exhibition. Whats interesting for our purposes is it was curated by edward stykan. Remember he was a pictorialist photographer, a flat iron photograph in 190, but he becomes curator of photography at moma in 1947. He left his roots behind and now is interested in a more democratic mass ideal of photography. Some interesting stats that help us get a sense of what its all about. As you see here, it started at moma in 1955 and toured to 69 countries. Its an exhibition of photography. You could have multiple copies of the exhibition. You can have two or three open simultaneously because its they are photographs. Make more copies. It toured to 69 countries. It included 503 photographs, snapped by 273 different photographers from 68 different countries. An attempt to provide some kind of global understanding of the world through the medium of photography. Over all of its iterations around the world, it had over 9 million visitors saw this exhibition. The book itself, which i will pass around a version of it in the class, you can see the catalog right here, it sold 4 million copies. Its still in print today. Go to amazon. You can buy a copy of the family man. Its very much it sells. Today i had you read some press releases that moma put out about this exhibition. I want to get your sense of what you thought about the press releases, whats important about the exhibition. How did those press releases describe the show . Yeah, will. The press release talks about it emphasizes how internationally this exhibition would be. I think they invited photographers from all around the world to submit their photos to be exhibited in the show. He focused on how the photos are from all around the world. Its like an International Exhibition rather than regional focus. Good. International exhibition, trying to get photographs from all over the world. Can i get someone to read this for us . You cant make it out on the screen. Please. The family of man is planned as an exhibition of photography portraying the universal elements and emotions and the oneness of human beings throughout the world. Its probably the most ambitious and challenging project photography has reached and one for the art of photography is uniquely qualified. Thank you. To build on what will said, we have photographs from around the world used to create an image of global unity. Its photography that can do this. The second quote can i get a volunteer to read that for us . We are concerned with photographs which express the universal through individual and the particular. That demonstrate the importance of the art of photography in explaining man to man across the world, dreams and aspirations mirroring the forces of love and truth and the coercive evil inherent in the world. Good. So there we kind of have a sense were talking about expressing the universal particular. He wants to find images that can suggest something about humans all together in one single image. Bring the images together to create some kind of global portrait of what it means to be a human. The family of humans, called the family man in the 1950s. Also the way photography itself is a universal medium. Anyone can understand a photograph. If you are someone who lives in australia, france, germany, china, you can understand a photograph. It communicates the same to everyone. Of course this isnt necessarily this isnt true. But he had this utopian idea that photography could do this. This is hard to see. This is sort of the layout of the exhibition. I want to call attention to some of the themes that he creates installations about. We have eating is one of the themes. All humans eat. All humans play. All humans drink. All humans have not all, but many humans have hard times and famine. A lot of people are religious. It tries to find these themes that can apply to wide swaths of the global population and photographs from around the world to prove that were all human. We all have dinner together. Thats one of the points of the exhibition. Also one scholar compared the exhibition to an oversized life magazine without the advertisements. Photo essays you see here. Photographs of families hanging together right here. Its an oversized photo essay. Interesting enough, they were from life archives. Went into life archives, found many photographs there. So we have this connection between the exhibition and life. Do you know why he named it . Back then, people talked about human kind as mankind. He saw this idea of the world as being one family. This is the family a global family. Were all the same. We all eat. We all drink. We all have families, according to this exhibition. Of course, we do all eat and drink and have families of some kind. Try to find the unity that links us as human beings. I want to say that we have no captions. We have some captions here and there. Each photograph is not captioned to tell us precisely what were looking at. He creates them blows these up large, sometimes crop images to cut out an essential element. He is controlling this project. He is the photo editor of the family of man. Whats interesting about having no captions is that the photographs go back to barts terms, encoded by the images around them. We will show you an example of this in a moment. I want to say that he had experience making these large these massive photographic exhibitions, in 1942, at moma he did the road to victory, a propaganda show talking about the american war effort. Pearl harbor bombed in december 1941, the exhibition designed to sort of encourage patriotism and to support the war effort. You can also see large sort of photographs being hung in sort of an interesting environment as a way to create some kind of propaganda feeling. He had sort of experience doing this. Because the exhibition, the installation shots are hard to read, the individual photographs, i have a spread in the catalog thats being passed around right here. Toward the end of the catalog we had seven portraits that were featured. What are we looking at here . What links these photographs . Yeah, will. They share a common theme which appears to be portraits of couples. Yes. Portraits of couples and ill give you a little capping here to tell you where they are from. This one is from holland, china canada, american india, usa, germany, sicily, italy. But we see again, sort of a largely western european and america. We do have china here. China suggests that around the world there are heterosexual couples. Here the quote, we too from a multitude from roman poet suggests these two couples can become some kind of multitude and they have significance and they are important. So good. Thats what were looking at. The more important question is how . Why would he do this . Whats the broader significance of this . What are the implications of this . What are some ways to think about what hes suggests about humanity here . About difference . About different global regions. What are some ways to look at this . Sort of humanizes different cultures for people. I feel like theres a Common Thread . Good. Humanizes these different cultures. Anyone else . Kind of equates them. In some way as well. Equates them. We have no idea who these people are. We dont know if these people were married or a couple. They could be brother and sister. They could be work mates. They could be colleagues. We dont know who they are. So in some ways by putting these photographs all together, he is generalizing vast differences in identity, nationality and suggesting all these people are the same. They are all couples. Again, we dont know who these people are, what they are doing, if they are even heterosexual partnership. Whats interesting about the family man overall is the way each photograph in the show is controlled by those around it. So, again, think back to roland barts idea the photograph is an image about a code. In family man, the other images around the photograph encode image to make us see it in a certain way. So he is really trying to control photographic meaning here and not allowing for the ambiguity of images. Question at this point about family man . And so again the culmination of images, of giant large photo essay is how stikend creates it. Begin to understand, too, of course it sort of originates in moma by stikend, has a particular view of the world. Yes, it suggests all the globe is linked through commonalities but still from an american perspective. The New York Times art critic hilton kraemer kind of suggests a little bit about its politics. Lets read this out loud and lets think about what kraemer is projecting here. Volunteer. Yeah. A selfcongratulatory means of obscuring problems under a blanket of ideology which takes for granted the essential goodness, innocence and moral superiority of the international good. What is cramer suggesting about the exhibition in global events and the anxiety of the period, the Nuclear Arms Race of the period . How does cramer read this exhibition . Almost just covers up all the issues you see around the world and within all these different areas because around this time is right at the end of the Second World War and toward the beginning of the korean war and what not and theres still a lot of International Even hatred you will see in this and kind of brings us together in one big happy family. Suggests american ideals are about this idea of global unity, but the world is fracture deeply fractured by the cold war at the same moment. No real coincidence that towards the end of the exhibition theres some pictures here of people voting in different countries. Not a picture of americans voting but from some other countries and suggesting that voting, democracy is the natural human universal way of government. Of course democracy is much better than dictatorship. Im not arguing that. Presents this idea of americans has democracy as only universal form of government that maybe suggests its subtle ideological or political agenda of this exhibition. The larger point here is to suggest the family man does present an american centric view of the world. Its goal is, again, utopian to show us how were all the same, but it is from an american perspective, and it shows the American Point of view is universal as is the meaning of photography. Again, i really cant overestimate the importance of this exhibition. Artists and photographers from around the world saw this exhibition in various locales. These locales are contentious sites. For instance, it was shown in west berlin before the berlin wall went up. Many east germans came over and saw the exhibition, had political overtones. Guatemala city had a major coup in the 1950s where the cia intervened and overthrew somebody they saw leaning towards communism. The show was there. So its no accident these shows went to contentious political sites, even in moscow a little bit later. Maybe emphasizes or shows us the politics of the family of man. Any more questions of family man before we move on . The catalog is circulating so have a look when it gets to you. One artist that is in the family man, at least from my estimation doesnt quite fit in to the show and heres his photograph from a page of people eating. You have a japanese woman drinking tea or having some sort of rice bowl something right here, someone in congo drinking out of a coconut and an american photograph of someone, a group of patrons at a hamburger joint. Ill show you, right here the caption, new york is taken by robert frank. For me this photograph is different. It suggests something through its composition. Ill go over that and we can maybe look at some other photographs and have you do some of the work yourselves. For me i look at this photograph in the context of the family man and it seems a bit different as i said. Number one, the number one point of difference is frank is alluding outside of the frame. Look lighter, right here, we have a doorway cut in half, showing the photograph should go on here and here. Theres a building next to the burger stand. So suggesting its just a selection of reality. Frank is alluding to life outside of the frame. Hes not suggesting this is true. Just sort of one version or one small slice of truth. Then we have robert frank is giving us this almost a photo within a photo, we discussed this numerous times this semester photographers have through ideas of framing, looking at doors and windows, to refer to the processes of photography itself. So hes self consciously giving us this photograph, the image within the image. So we begin we look at these two aspects begin to show us how frank, somebody is allowing us to see a photograph as an intentional utterance. You select a certain view of reality, you photograph it, you know, and that very kind of themes that act and so we see again his selection of this, but also how the world continues around it. So frank alludes that a photograph is a view he chooses from many, many others. And from this we go back to a, discussion we saw the exhibition upstairs of walker evans and the way walker evans used some of these ideas. A flat image with small images of a head shot. Takes a photograph of this window of a photo studio. We see how its constructed. So robert frank was really influenced by walker evans and we see franks interest in flatness as well as selfconscious, selfreflective ideas about photography. Trying to argue here that both evans and frank are interested in showing us this selfconsciousness about photography. See how the photograph is composed. See it as an intentional utterance, not as a factual truth. Is that clear so far . This way robert frank works between the ideas of walker evans on one hand, sort of modernism but also a little bit of family man. Hes in the family man but also interested in ideas of photo journalism. So robert frank sort of described his practice simply as trying to make art photographs that look like press photographs or art photographs that are inspired by popular photo journalism. You can sort of see that i think in this slide here. Some background on robert frank his biography is important to his world view and his photography. He was born and raised in switzerland and lived out world war ii there as a young man. And as someone who grew up jewish in switzerland, he was petrified of the nazis attacking switzerland. Had this sort of dread from his young adult life and moved to the u. S. In 1947. He was a freelance photographer. He kept trying to get his pictures into life magazine. They kept rejecting him, so he grew frustrated with that lifes model of photojournalism. As frank himself has said, he said, quote, i wanted to see my pictures in life magazine and they never did buy them, so i developed a tremendous contempt for them which helped me. End zoets. Again he wanted to have that qz. Again he wanted to have thauzoe. Again he wanted to have thazoet. Again he wanted to have thatzoe. Again he wanted to have thaezoe. Again he wanted to have tha. Again he wanted to have that language of photo journalism that was published widely but more skeptical style didnt fit in with life magazines model of photo journalism. Hes such an important figure in american photography. Any photographer after robert frank, sort of thinking about photojournalism or street photography and these sorts of things. Robert frank is vitally important. In some ways that photograph counters the optimism of the family man. Interesting in that language and interesting in undercutting that optimism and the universality of the family man. I should say, frank used a lika. This is not a lika, this is a cannon, but very similar. We showed this. Its very easy to photograph, you put it up to your eye. Its connected to your body. You can sort of shoot off like this, shoot over here. It allows for a versatile understanding of photography and allows you to catch images on the fly. Imagine frank on the street capturing images, allows his versatility. Heres a 35 millimeter film strip to show us three of franks frames. Well look at the photograph in a moment. Shows how he thinks about capturing images. And in the mid50s he won a guggenheim fellowship, a prestigious fellowship that allow you to take on major projects. His project was to drive around the country, drive around america, and so between 55 and 56, he took several short trips from new york and also took one long nine month Cross Country road trip. So driving. And brought his cameras and took many photographs around the country. And he shot over 20,000 pictures. So a massive amount of film he took. Produced contact sheets. He printed a thousand of them to regular scale and then chose 83 to publish in his book called the americans in 1958. Came out in america in 1959. You see it right here. 83 photographs. Kind of like walker evans american photographs, you have an image on one side and very short caption telling you where it was taken on the other side. And this is the books very first image. Sort of the opening salvo, the shot of the americans. It is a very rich image. And robert frank selected it for a precise reason. To be the very first image of the book. So kind of divided it into two parts, the formal qualities of it, how he constructs the image and then think about the social message, the politics of this message. So the ideas of the formal qualities. Who wants to get us started. What is interesting about this photograph . Its pretty symmetric. I would say there is the divide where it bleeds into two separate windows where its almost a picture in and of itself. Right there, theres the kind of the bottom of the window and the lines go with that vertically as well. It is very symmetrical and one window here and one here and one divided down the window. It is quite a symmetrical image. Yeah, lynn . I think the way it is divided into three segments it has that idea of a film strip. The speaker is talking about. A film strip and we have two images but considered more broadly almost having two photographs in the photograph. Anyone else. I think it is interesting how you cant see their faces but the person on the right looks like hes been covered by the flag and on the left is more covered by the white i dont know what that is. This is a window shade i think. We have in some ways a shadow covered by the flag. So i think the formal qualities is windows like separate photo frames. So we saw the hamburger picture, we have two portraits in the photograph. So again frank suggesting that his photograph is just a selection of these windows that could go on and on and on. And also as you sort of alluded to, we have ambiguity in the image. This womans face is obscured by the dark shadows of the room. Obscured of the window shade coming down against her. This flag is blocking this woman. And look at the title of the picture, it is called parade, hoboken, new jersey. So there is a patriotic parade going on outside of the window and these people are looking down at the parade and frank is looking at those watching the parade. And if a parade is a public exhibition, this public presentation of patriotism, of sort of ideas of whatever the holiday is, but it is very public and outward facing. Frank isnt interested in that sort of ideas about america. He wants to find what is behind that facade. What is lurking in the shadows of america. But also doing so in a modernist selfconscious way. We saw walker evans photographing a brick wall, the two apertures, the two windows. And we know were looking at a photograph and again the sort of photograph within a photograph allude to sort of many other photographs that he could have taken but he sort of alludes to that in this picture. But the point again is the americans is trying to show us something that is sort of darker than the family man. Something that sort of shows us a darker underbelly to American Life in the 1950s. And as we talked about with walker evans, franks photographs are full of social intelligence, they tell so much about america in the mid 1950s flipping through the book but also his formal intelligence. He is a photographers photographer. Artists love robert frank and his work. So the duality between the social and formal intelligence makes him such an important photographer for this class. And i want to mention, too, he experienced his own sort of dark side of america on his road trip. He was in arkansas the account goes in 1955 and had his camera out and taking photographs in arkansas. He was of swiss origin so his english was heavily accented. And so the police saw a man who seemed quote unquote foreign taking photographs in their town and they sort of detained him and put him in jail for a little bit and questioned him. To be a photographer, foreigner taking photographs in an American City in the mid50s, you could be a suspected communist, taking in to survey cities and trying to gain information or sort of plot some kind of infiltration. So robert frank himself was sort of detained by Arkansas Police for being a foreignborn photographer. So i think that is also sort of fuels part of his project. I want to spend some time on this image. I think if youre in the round table we had on tuesday, this photograph was mentioned but i want to look at it some more. This is the cover photograph of the americans called trolley new orleans from 55, 56. And the same type of thing. Talk about the formal quality and the social qualities. But before i do, i want to allude to the idea this is a really amazing photograph. And you look at franks film and it is a one shot. So hes photographing other things, other things, other things and then all of a sudden you turn around and captured the one image and it was this. Only one try for this image. And it is such an incredible image. So were reminded of henry bersans decisive moment, frank able to capture this one perfectly balanced and composed image on the fly. So lets look at the social and narrative approach to image. What do we see here that suggests something about American Life in the 1950s . Anything we havent heard yet. The prevalence of segregation. And how do you see that in the image. It is quite split down the middle with the white people in the front and the black people sent to the back. There is a trolley in the new orleans in the American South and we have the white customers in the front, white passengers in the front and the africanamerican ones in the back. And how do you describe their expressions . What are some ways we can interpret body language and that sort of thing in this in these figures in the picture . I think im most struck by the woman in the second frame. Shes got a sour look on her face. Kind of like speaks to the image of a whole how they push africanamericans to the back which is distasteful. Hes looking out the window at frank as a photographer, registering his existence behind the camera, looking disdainfully at the camera. Other sort of views of body language, of sort of how the arms are going. Sort of ideas of the characters in this sort of drama . I think it is interesting the way the young boy is sort of wearing the posture in the frame and its odd because there is a suggestion that hes better than him but theyre even. Its odd. It is a great detail. The arms are mirrored right here and so in some ways there is comparative body language between the two. But of course the similarities end there in terms of social treatment. I think it is interesting that the children are in the center of the image because they are the ones that are not really playing a role in segregation. They are very innocent and whole. So the children here, so really young girl, young boy right here. And the idea that this is the future. I believe children are the future, the idea they are the future, but are they on this side here, supporting fighting for the rights of those in the back. So the children are sort of the fulcrum of this image. Was your hand up . I thought it was interesting that the black man, the way hes positioned, where it was spaced, you wouldnt think he was on a moving vehicle. He was sitting posing for the picture, sitting like straight forward, not like sitting like on the bus. So it is kind of great. It all kind of especially the folks right here looking directly out at the photographer, not forward in the trolley and we have the window. Almost seems like theyre individual photographs. Yeah. And i think the fact that theyre all looking at the photographer shows they were aware the picture was being taken but probably so quick that they didnt have time to react, the fact theyre not smiling, not posing, makes it seem much more natural and truly capturing a moment in time. So it doesnt seem posed, but looking at robert frank we have this natural quality to it. And i think the stern view of the woman here and the children here and this man almost looks desperate in a way that he is sort of thinking about his perhaps his plight in life to be a marginalized prejudice against africanamerican in new orleans. His face, he looks oddly relaxed and thats sort of like he accepted his position. Another good read. Again shows the way that photography is very ambiguous, relaxed and the way his arm is draped out here, sort of resting outside of the window. But the gist of it here is that we see segregation. Literally. We see a picture of segregation with africanamericans in the back of this trolley. Frank documents that. Again, think about the family of man. This would not be involved in that exhibition. Sort of any ideas of mistreatment or institutional racism didnt have a part in the exhibition. Lets go back to the formal approach. We had a little bit of this, but reiterate some of the things youve said and go further. So what are some ways that frank composes this photo formally. It looks and references the flat picture plain that were looking at. So again flat. A lot of photographs get a sense of threedimensionality, and depth and frank is sort of this flatness here. Yeah, jason. Similar to what we talk about the picture within a picture. Each window is like a picture. Good. Each window, again, we saw t window like an individual photo frame. This obscured portrait here with the window closed, we have one, two, three, four portraits done in this picture. Almost looks like a film strip. When frank developed his films, this is how 35 millimeter film used to look. I know these days, most of us these days are using digital, but back then you had sort of these you were using film, it almost looks like a filmstrip. What about the reflections up here . What are some ways that we could think about those, or the reflections down here. Lynn, is your hand up . Like i just think its sort of like a distorted reality which is interesting like because a photograph is supposed to show the truth of something but it creates that ambiguity of what youre really seeing. Good. So another film strip up here and we have utter ambiguity. Almost abstract photographs. Suggesting a photograph doesnt have to be realistic or naturalistic, it creates some sense of abstraction as well. What about the idea of the reflection, too. What does that suggest about photography from robert frank. We see reflections that show us what is behind him. And i even had a student argue n this i think right here you might see robert frank or maybe himself shooting the photograph. But the idea i think too is that we see that behind reflecting. The idea is the reflection show whats behind the camera. A friend is interested in this idea of not only whats in front of the camera but also what the camera is not shooting. The photograph is just one slice of the reality and robert frank alludes to that through his photograph. So we see both the segregation of the 1950s in the south as well as the complete the constructed and incomplete nature of the meaning of photography. So frank is showing us social reality but also a reminder this is not the truth, you know, not the fact, but its sort of one fact out. Many. And so again to reiterate this frank is really working against that you see the photodprf as a construction open to interpretation and open to manipulation. Anymore questions on robert frank before we move onto one last photograph before we wrap up for the day . If he was so against the family man did he submit his photograph to be included in the exhibit or was he selected . Im sure he submitted his photograph but he wants to be part of that main stream discourse but doesnt want to compromise his values and integrity. Thats what i thought was interesting about his work hes definitely engage would the family man, he knows it, but ameri there hes sort of rejecting it. I want to end today by thinking about frank ideas about photography begin to circle back to photo journalism and begin to have an effect on how the cold war was covered in the american press. And to do so i quickly had to think about the vietnam war. We could do a whole class with just the visual culture of the vietnam war. It did question american certainty, american exceptionalism and begin to question ideas about who we are as a nation and what we value as a nation, called into question our involvement in vietnam. And of course globally people raised questions about american morality, american ethics in that war. And in the coverage of the vietnam war especially like magazines like life magazine you begin to see ideas of doubt and uncertainty in the photos being produced and used in the coverage of the vietnam war. Hes a wounded medic soldier in 1966. A frame of it is right here on the cover of life. So how do we see these ideas here . How does this photograph sort of question ideas of american exceptionalism . How could it question ideas of certainty . What are some ways we could begin to think about this wounded medic works on soldier . I think it provides a stark contrast to the photos we saw before where you werent allowed to show any kind of american corpse or any kind of american gore. And this is we dont know if hes alive or not. Hes kind of laying there. Hes been injured himself and working on bodies so we see american soldiers in bodily trauma. I think with that caption or any kind of supplemental material you dont necessarily know whats going on in the photo. You just look and see how theres this guy holding up maybe one of his comrades, one of his friends injured ibbattle. You dont necessarily know hes trying to help him. The comments captured hes a wounded medic and its kind of ironic the medic is wounded and helping a wounded soldier. It adds an ironic layer to the image and also the idea of a blind medic. An ambulance comes to your house and the medic is literally blindfolded. Something about blinding the blind. And the ironny of a wounded medic. A medic is healthy and takes care of you, and here we have a wounded medic. So my point here is even a photograph like this which is a press photograph again communicates some of the skepticism, some of that american and national doubt creeping into sort of American Life in the 1960s through a photograph on the cover of life magazine. To sum up for today i want to review some of the bigger points we talked about to discuss how cold war photography, the ambiguity in the photograph were pressed by the need for political certainty. And we saw how artists began to acknowledge the uncertainty and skepticism in their photographs by robert frank. A a photograph likes this begins to show americans the conference going on and protest and all the sort of things that happen in the late 1960s. Thats it for today. Well pick up on tuesday after this and talk about the civil rights photography, but have a great weekend and see you soon. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. On september 2, 1945, government and military officials from the empire of japan signed surrender documents in a ceremony aboard the uss missouri in tokyo bay. Formally bringing the pacific war and the hostilities of world war ii to a close. The japanese emperor had announced japans Unconditional Surrender 18 days earlier on august 15, 1945. To mark the 75th anniversary the friends of the world war ii memorial hosted an online comemerative program. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3 go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work but reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. I should just mention madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press, and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history an American History tv on cspan 3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Live now to capitol hill to hear from centers for Disease Control director dr. Robert redfield. Hes testifying on the latest Coronavirus Response efforts before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Live coverage on cspan 3. Live coverage here on cspan 3 of the hearing with cdc director dr. Robert redfield. Hell be giving testimony this morning on the Coronavirus Response efforts. Were waiting for the hearing to get under way here. Live coverage on cspan 3. Live coverage here on cspan 3 of a hearing with cdc director dr. Robert redfield. Hell be giving testimony this morning on the Coronavirus Response efforts. Were waiting for the hearing to get under way here. Live coverage on cspan 3
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