My mother was born a year before the start of the “Great Depression”, hopefully she will die well after the end of this one.
It all started as I was transferring photo files from my mother’s computer to surprise her with a new digital frame. As I was editing the photos to load on the frame, I came across old family photos that my cousin had scanned from my grandparent’s photo album.
Looking at those somber faces at my grandparent’s wedding in 1927 (nobody ever smiled for photos back then) I began to wonder if they had any premonition where country was heading, and the effects of the great depression they were about to endure.
My grandfather, Clarence Andrew Severin married my grandmother Rose Boos, on June 1 of 1927 in Atchison, Kansas. It must have been a typical middle class wedding, my grandfather was a banker at the time, but were from mid-western farm families.
The following year, my grandfather was selling stocks and bonds to many of the prominent businessmen in northeast Kansas. My grandmother and he, also became proud parents to my mother, Rose Marie.
One of his clients was Atchison businessman Herb Muchnic, founder of Locomotive Finish Materials Company (LFM). He was one of the wealthiest men in town, with an opulent home on the bluffs of the Missouri River.
A few weeks before Black Thursday on October 24th of 1929, my grandfather convinced Mr. Muchnic and some of his clients, to let him travel to Chicago to divest their interests in stocks and bonds. It was a decision that changed how our family came through the depression.
Because of his quick actions, my grandfather was able to secure a job with LFM as an executive. While the rest of the country suffered through the more than 10 years of depression, our family led a relatively secure lifestyle.
The “Great Depression” has had a lasting influence on society. My grandparent’s and my mother’s generations would live life frugally; always worried that another drop was just around the corner. My generation, the baby-boomers, would be torn between the frugality our parents practiced, and the reckless abandonment of spending. But the “Great Depression” also brought to the forefront something that would have a lasting influence on my life….photojournalism.
Photojournalism grew out of the depression of 1929.
The FSA was a New Deal agency designed to combat rural poverty during a period when the agricultural climate and national economy were causing great dislocations in rural life. Contrary to popular association, photography was not the primary work of the Farm Security Administration. The photographers who worked under the name of the FSA were hired on for public relations; they were supposed to provide visual evidence that there was need, and that the FSA programs were meeting that need. But it did more, it stirred a nation, it brought names and faces to what were government statistics.
Roy Stryker, an economist from Columbia University, was not a photographer, but he had a talent for recognizing good photos. Stryker was the first, and perhaps the best, photo editor, who assembled the talents of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and Kansas born Gordon Parks amongst others. Their work would dominate the pages of Life, Look and other publications during that period.
As the Dust Bowl swept through the Midwest adding to the depression, my grandfather’s family was lucky. Having saved a number of fortunes, he took an executive job at LFM. While the country was in turmoil, the photos from my grandparent’s album showed a different side of life. A side of normalcy while the country was falling apart.
But it also showed the importance that photos had become in everyday life. What stuck me was the similarity in composition and feeling in the photos of the pages of my grandparent’s album, to those of works of the master’s of the FSA, shooting not far from Atchison itself. Granted they were no Gordon Parks or Dorothea Lange, but could they have been influenced by their work seen weekly in Life or Look.
I grew up in my grandparent’s house. The latest Life and Look Magazines were always sitting on a smoker stand next to my grandfather’s favorite chair. Still teaming with great photos by Parks, Lange and others.
As I child I would browse through the pages with wonder, always wishing I was there, at what seemed exotic locations. I guess that is when my desire to become a photographer took root.
In a round about way my life has been a product of the first great depression. If not for the FSA, Life, Look and the growth of photojournalism, I might have become the lawyer my family always wanted.
As we now enter the second “Great Depression” I call upon the newly elected president to once more raise great photojournalism out of the ashes of the FSA. With the fall of newspapers, raise of mediocre i-reporters and the visually untalented social media, it is time for photojournalism to once more tell the story of America with the feeling of a Dorothea Lange.
Somewhere out there is the new Roy Stryker that can assemble the talent that put a face to the numbers and statistics that we see as the primary coverage by a decimated media.
History does tend to repeat itself. You never truly know what will come out of examining the past, even something as simple as a family photo album.
My mother was born a year before the start of the “Great Depression”, but it was also a year before the start of the great rise of social awareness through the use of photojournalism. Perhaps the start of this new depression will also give rise to a new social awareness, and that photojournalist will once again be called on lead the charge.
nice job, Ed…well written.