{"id":20508,"date":"2024-03-12T16:02:36","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T20:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/?p=20508"},"modified":"2024-03-12T16:16:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T20:16:53","slug":"crop-and-click-episode-9-walker-evans-the-fsa-and-the-politics-of-the-1930s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/2024\/03\/12\/crop-and-click-episode-9-walker-evans-the-fsa-and-the-politics-of-the-1930s\/","title":{"rendered":"Crop and Click Episode 10 – Walker Evans, the FSA, and the Politics of the 1930s"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Walker Evans, Tin False Front Building, Moundville Alabama<\/em>, 1936, gelatin silver print mounted on board, Bates College Museum of Art purchase with Dr. Robert A. and Minna F. Johnson \u201936 Art Acquisition Fund, 1984.5.13<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In this podcast, we explore Walker Evans\u2019 work with the Farm Security Administration (FSA), specifically his photograph Store with False Front<\/a>. Vicinity of Selma, Alabama. We engage with Roy Stryker\u2019s mission, capturing \u201cAmerica for Americans,\u201d and the politics behind the collection. Simultaneously, we address Evans\u2019 desire to make an artistic product and what this means for the truth value of a documentary image. Engaging in close visual analysis of Store with false front. Vicinity of Selma, Alabama, we discuss the aestheticization of poverty and labor and the role of the human body within the context of Evans’ works. We also explore another FSA photograph by Arthur Rothstein, entitled Sign, Birmingham, Alabama, and discuss how it also engages with the politics of the FSA and promotes cultural stereotypes. We end by wrestling with a critical question, do documentary images have any objective truths at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2060Click here<\/a> for a transcription and bibliography as well as images of the works discussed in today’s episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This podcast is part of the Crop and Click series featuring student research on documentary photography from our collection. \u2060Click here<\/a> for a portfolio of all the works discussed in the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hosted and produced by Nora Fox and Nathaniel Zuckerberg. Cover art by Lucy Sherman ’23. <\/p>\n\n\n

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In this podcast, we explore Walker Evans\u2019 work with the Farm Security…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1626,"featured_media":20509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[68,90],"class_list":["post-20508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast","tag-museum","tag-nan-coulter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20508"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20516,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20508\/revisions\/20516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}