tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20637018.post-42836285680560005652008-07-14T01:35:00.009-05:002008-07-14T12:47:10.626-05:00<h3 class="category">The photographer explains his art. <br /> </h3> <br /> UPDATE: I've redone the Library of Congress links in this post, and I hope they'll work now. If they don't, please let me know. <br /> <br /> <div class="separator" style="text-align: center; clear: both;"><a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field%28NUMBER+@1%28cph+3a53274%29%29"><img src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_1HwP9iV9Bsk/SHsJKSM8iAI/AAAAAAAADGM/a7I21Y4vLyE/s320-R/duststorm.jpg" style="border: 0pt none ;" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: center;">FSA photo by Arthur Rothstein</div> <div style="text-align: center;">Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.</div> <br /> Arthur Rothstein worked as a <a href="http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html">photographer during the Great Depression</a> for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_Administration">Resettlement Agency</a>, later known as the Farm Security Agency (FSA).&nbsp; One of Rothstein's most famous FSA photographs appears above. (Click the image for a larger view.)<br /> <br /> Rothstein commented on the photograph in a 1964 interview at the Smithsonian:<br /> <br /> <blockquote class="tr_bq">You may remember the stories in those days about the black blizzards that swept across the plains and even darkened the sky in New York City...<br /> <br /> Well, it was a dramatic catastrophe in American agriculture. Strangely enough, it was a very difficult thing to show in pictures, but I lived in the Dust Bowl for several months and went out every day and took pictures. <br /> <br /> In the process, one day, wandering around through Cimarron County in Oklahoma, which is in the panhandle of Oklahoma, I photographed this farm and the people who lived on the farm. The farmer and his two children, two little boys, were walking past a shed on their property and I took this photograph with the dust swirling all around them. <br /> <br /> I had no idea at the time that it was going to become a famous photograph, but it looked like a good picture to me and I took it. And I took a number of other pictures on the same property. And then I went on to some other farms and took those pictures. This particular picture turned out to be the picture that was quite famous. <br /> <br /> It was a picture that had a very simple kind of composition, but there was something about the swirling dust and the shed behind the farmer. What it did was the kind of thing Roy [Stryker, his FSA supervisor] always talked about-it showed an individual in relation to his environment. <br /> <br /> Of course this is the sort of thing that painters from time immemorial have been trying to do-to show man in relation to his environment. You know the old axiom that " Art is the expression of man," so here, if this has any art, it's because it's an expression of man. <br /> <br /> <font size="2">Source: <a href="http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/rothst64.htm">Arthur Rothstein Oral History</a></font></blockquote> <br /> In the same document, Rothstein also explains a controversial photo of a <a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/PPALL:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28fsa1998019244/PP%29%29">skull lying on the sunbaked soil of the South Dakota badlands</a>. <br /> <br /> One of my favorite Rothstein FSA photos is "<a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/PPALL:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28fsa2000009846/PP%29%29">Car on the plain"</a>, taken in October 1939 in Washington County, Colorado. <br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAProthstein.htm">A short biography of Rothstein</a> <br /> <a href="http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rothstein_arthur.html">Links to online archives of Rothstein images</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><br/>Thanks for reading. This is a post from <a href="http://prairiebluestem.blogspot.com/" title="Prairie Bluestem">Prairie Bluestem</a> at http://prairiebluestem.blogspot.com . Please visit. Photos and text copyright © 2006-2008, Genevieve L. Netz. All rights reserved. Do not republish on or off the internet. My e-mail address is prairiebluestem@gmail.com.</div>Genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08004780820713448880noreply@blogger.com