While learning about Robert Frank's American photography, I found out that Walker Evans, an American photographer influenced him to pursue that project. He was also a photojournalist. Evans is best known for his documentation of the Great Depression. The image above is "Alabama Tenant Farmer Family singing Hymns" (1936). This was taken towards the end of the depression, in the Southern U.S.

The title describes the picture exactly. There is a family singing hymns. The father is holding the book and the children are following his cue. While non of them are poorly dressed, they aren't formally dressed either. The boys' hair is a little shaggy. Lots of wrinkles in everyone's clothes. These details help the picture provide more exposition.

The choice of backdrop, the side paneling of a house, adds scale to the image. Each child reaches a different height in the paneling, and the father towers above. It adds a sense of measure to the gradient established by having them stand in order from shortest to tallest. The expression in their faces while singing also shows each one's character. The father is stolid. The daughter attempts maturity. One son seems uncertain. And the shortest boy is overcompensating by appearing to sing the loudest, something his aggressively opened mouth leads me to believe he is doing.

Ultimately, its the positioning of the family and the details of them that made this a strong picture for me. The way they look, how they behave, it gave the picture it's feeling of a tired hope. They don't look particularly happy, and how could they given the time this was taken, but they don't look defeated. And the singing cues that they're biding for a better time.

Last post was about a Robert, this one's about another. Robert Frank was a Swiss Photographer who won the Guggenheim fellowship. He used that funding to tour across the United States, photographing different cities, different people, and culminated that with his photographic book, The Americans.

Frank toured through many cities, Houston included, but the image I included is one that drew me in. Titled "US 90" (1956), the photograph is of a woman in a car on the shoulder of a Texas highway. US 90 runs along the southern border of Texas. I had traveled down this highway in the summer of 2019 with a friend while on our way to see Marfa, Texas and White Sands, New Mexico.

I think that's why i gravitated towards it. I've been on that highway, some fifty-plus years after. And with the small amount of background exposition, I did get a sense of familiarity with the setting. I could imagine the temperature and feeling of the day just based off the image. And I think that's something other who may not have driven here could also take away. The desert is visible, and it's not hard to imagine was that would feel like

The main object in the image is the car. The camera is tilted at an angle that shows us half of the windshield and on headlight. Behind the car is the road, mountains, and possibly phone line poles. In the passenger seat is a woman looking forward, and a child with his head leaning against her shoulder.

The mood that i pick up is one of exhaustion. The kid is asleep. The woman look out of it. This highway, and west Texas for that matter, is known for how flat and "ugly" it is. All desert and heat. Flat. After Big Bend, there isn't much for a while. And the picture captures that through their expressions.

Robert Mapplethorpe is an American photographer known for his black and white images. He worked almost exclusively in black and white, which led to his appreciation in the subtleties between barely distinguishable shades of grays and whites and blacks. While there is more conversation around his more controversial photographic themes, like that of NYC subcultures, I chose this image, "Apartment Windows" (1977) because it is a different enough still life from the other images I've blogged about.

The image is of a facade of an apartment building. There is a 7x11 grid of windows, and each row alternates from six to five to six. There is a shadow, likely caused by another building, over the majority of the left third. This photograph focuses on those subtleties between grays that Mapplethorpe was a fan of.

The windows have curtains and blinds, but they are all organically different. Some have the shade all the way down, others up. The curtains fall straight down in most, but one window stands out by having them out of the way. Looking in, the apartment is black. It's the strongest black in the photograph. The whitest whites come from having both the blinds and curtains, the blackest black comes from the lack of both.

I can't say that I found a mood to this image. It didn't strike me from an emotional angle. What drew me in is the analytical aspect of it. By having the windows arranges in a grid across the entire image, I felt the need to count and see how symmetrical it was. I found that the arrangement is consistent. The last column on the right has the windows fully visible. The column on the far left has them bisected.

The technical arrangement of the photograph is what makes this interesting. That and how small differences between the windows change the shades, along with the creeping shadow on the left.

James Van Der Zee is Black photographer who was based out of New York. He started working as a photographer during the Harlem Renaissance. Because of this time period, his early work set out to document and reconstruct the perception of black people. His portraits aimed to change social expectations for who black people are and could be. This photograph is titled "Raccoon Couple in Car," (1932). It is one of his most recognizable.

The image shows two people, a white woman and a black man, in a car in New York City. The man is in a fancy, shiny convertible, which considering the year this was taken, is not a common sight. Black people weren't expected to be able to afford such things. The man is also dressed in a fur coat and hat, which gives off this swagger. The woman next to him is also dressed in a similar fur coat, with nice shoes. Three residential New York buildings are seen in the back, hinting that this is just in a neighborhood, a natural setting. And the woman being white carries it's own implications. At a time where racism was far more prevalent, to have a white woman with a Black man meant that in no sense are Black men lesser than white men.

What Van Der Zee accomplished with this image coincides with what the Harlem Renaissance was about. Black people were reinventing what it meant to be Black in America, and this picture shows that they are just as capable of high class indicators. It may not seem that revolutionary now, but for the time it worked to rebuild the image of a Black American. A simple portrait that captures this movement.

And from a technical standpoint, the photograph is framed in an interesting way. The image shows us the entirety of the woman. The middle and lower thirds are dedicated to the subject, with the top third providing context to where it was taken. The shiny car reflects a lot of light, which tells the viewer it's new and expensive. The convertible top solidifies that this is a pricey vehicle, and having the man in the driver's seat, looking at the camera nonchalantly, adds a mood or feeling of confidence.

Carrie Mae Weems is a photographer based out of Brooklyn, New York. While she works with many artistic mediums, her photography is renown for it's themes of issue that black, and specifically black women, face in daily life. The following image is from her book "Kitchen Table Series" published in 1996.

The photographs in the book all had a similar framing that showed what was happening at this specific table. This one features two subjects, a mother and daughter, with the mother reading a large book, pen in hand, while the daughter looks over her shoulder. what i liked about this one is that there is a lot of emotion here, even with minimal props and expressions. The subjects aren't doing anything strange. in fact, it's a pretty mundane premise. What is likely a mother helping her daughter with something.

What really works here is the lighting. By having the image lit by the lamp above, it gives the impression of it being late in the day. With no visible source of sunlight, I'm left to assume that this is in the evening. The tired expressions on both of their faces further pushed me towards that assumption.

The image also has pretty good symmetry. It's shifted towards the left, but nonetheless the table and lamp divide the image in tow. The right side has the door frame, the left side has the daughter.

The theme of this photograph seem to be feelings of responsibility and exhaustion. How motherhood requires sacrifices. How ordinary scenes of helping children with their work is a type of labor that is underappreciated and undervalued.

Lee Friedlander is an American photographer who focused on social landscapes in the 1960s and 70s. He is from the Pacific Northwest and worked primarily with black and white film.

This photograph is "Kansas City, Missouri" (1965). The photo is a good example of Friedlander's style. It's a glimpse of a street in Kansas City, where the most prominent subjects are the road and store signs and two subjects in the far back. There is a motel sign, a cleaners sign, and a no parking sign. The two figures are a plane and a cow. The cow is on top of a building. The place looks as though it's leaving a trail of smoke behind it.

There is so much going on in this picture, and that's why I like it. At first it looks mundane. Oh a street and lamp post? But as I paid attention to the details I found it more funny. "No parking," the sign reads, but there is almost no one. One car. No people. No animals. The lamppost divides the storefronts from the street. And then that cow? Why is that on top of a building? Reminds me of the humor in that bass pro shop pyramid in Memphis and the hat on the mini Eiffel tower in Paris, Texas. The plane, why is it leaving that trail? Is it falling? Why does it look like it's still climbing up? It's all interesting once you start to pay attention.

Paul Strand is an American photographer who helped define photography as an art form in the 1900s. This photograph is known as "Wire Whee" (1933).

This photograph focuses on the framing and detail of the car. The make/model of the car isn't really distinguishable, in part due to its age, but mostly to the intentional cropping. The picture shows half of the headlight, a fraction of the body, and half of the wheel. The image is very dark. The wheel has little detail outside of the silhouettes of the spokes. The ridges on the wire encasing leading to headlights show a bumpy texture, while the body looks really smooth. There's a bit fo a reflection in the headlights, but it's a very warped look at what appears to be the buildings near the cars. Little windows are visible

I liked this photograph for the way it's framed and the contrast. The blacks are really black. i can't see the tire. I can't tell how thick, how recessed, or how textured it is. It's just a shadow with spokes. And the more I look at it, the more confusing it gets. The placement of the headlight makes me think the wheel is on the right. But the more I try and distinguish it, the more it begins to look like its on the left. Weird.