feb 7

Kayla Vahling

Film Response 2

1/28/11

Debbie Fleming Caffery

            I enjoyed the film on Debbie Fleming Caffery.  I really liked her work, and I found the images she created to be very interesting and moving.  As the film narrated her experiences and explained her journey around the southern part of North America I found each new set of images even more interesting than the last.  Some of my favorite images were of the prostitutes in the town in Mexico.   They were very intimate and honest, and I was very impressed that she was able to get close enough to the women to photograph them in such situations.

            Another part of the film that I found interesting was at the beginning when one of the critics compared Debbie’s work to that of the photographers of the depression era, like Dorothea Lange.   At first I thought they were very similar, but then the narrator explained how Lange’s photos became icons of the time period,, while Caffery’s images were of individuals trying to survive in hard times, regardless of the time period.  It was interesting to see the similarities between the photos, but to also recognize the timelessness of photos of poverty and disaster stricken areas.  Overall I really enjoyed both the documentary and Debbie’s work, I found them to be very thought provoking and moving.

feb 6

Feb 3-5

feb 2

january 31/feb 1

january 26-30

january 25

january 24

january 23 - Dorothea Lange Presentation

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was born in New Jersey in 1895.  She studied photography and worked in various photo studios in New York during the early stages of her career, before moving to San Francisco in 1918 and opening a portrait studio.  As the era of the Great Depression fell on the United States, Lange changed her photographic style.  Her studio portraiture shifted into shots of the homelessness and the unemployment that plagued the U.S.  Her moving photographs caught the eyes of professional photographers and landed her a job with the Federal Resettlement Administration, which later became the Farm Security Administration.

            Lange’s photographs quickly became the icons of the era.  Her shots included scenes on the poverty stricken streets and farms of the U.S.  They showed the struggles of the migrant workers and sharecroppers struggling to make a living during the depression.

Her images continued to capture attention, and in 1941 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in the photographic arts.  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lange shot many images of the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. 

            In 1945, Lange was offered a faculty position by Ansel Adams at the California School of Fine Arts.  Lange died at age 70 in 1965, but her photographs remain as reminders of the struggles that millions faced during the Great Depression.