Research Point: FSA Project.

Research Point: FSA Project.

The subject of the FSA Project was covered in Photography 2: Landscape, but there it naturally concentrated on the images rather that the stories that lay behind them.   By casting a more analytic eye over these images it is clear that many of them are staged and designed to produce an response in the viewer.  The story of the Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange is well known and documented in The Library of Congress FSA collection where Lange started the session quite far back from the family and slowly closed in until she obtains a reaction from the children and took the famous image.

Of the sixteen photographers employed only three were female and one black.  Was their gender of colour reflected in their pictures?  This is a theme I may explore in the Critical Review.

The photographers chosen by Roy Stryker, the head of the project, were all established and successful in their own right and I wonder if while no doubt showing sympathy for the people being photographed they were capable of feeling empathy with them.  If you can’t empathise with people it is too easy to exploit them.  This is also a theme I may explore further in the Critical Review.

The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An Overview. [Online]. Available from:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

[Accessed: 5th, August 2015].