HUMANITIESSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1993 VOLUME 14/NUMBER 5 Dorothea Lange D o c u m e n t i n g t h e D e p r e s s i o n EDITOR'S NOTE America in the Thirties Okies buffeted by the Dust Bowl.. .field hands despairing of drought.. .potato camp squatters waiting for work.. .The faces of the Great Depression haunt us still. They were called by photographer Edward Steichen "the most remarkable human documents that were ever rendered in pictures." The times brought a fusing of talents: novelist Erskine Caldwell and photographer Margaret Bourke-White; James Agee and Walker Evans. In the outpouring of images, one was to become an icon: a photograph of a wom-to-the-bone woman and her young children. The photogra­ Dorothea Lange, 1934 pher was Dorothea Lange. — Photo by Paul S. Taylor. Courtesy of the Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum. Gift of Paul S. Taylor. In this issue, Therese Thau Heyman writes about the work of Lange, who left her photographic studio in San Francisco for the open road. Traveling with her was labor economist Paul Taylor, her collaborator and eventually her husband. "March 1936," reads a Lange note from the field. "Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother age 32. Father is native Cali­ fornian. Destitute in pea pickers' camp, Nipomo, California, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tires in order to buy food." Humanities A bimonthly review published by the Taylor describes how he and Lange coped: "Very early we got a sta­ National Endowment for the Humanities. tion wagon.. .We saw that we could put Dorothea's equipment, a ladder and everything and she could climb up on top. When she was on top of Chairman: Sheldon Hackney the car, she just stood up.. .You see, she wasn't very tall, and if she took photographs down here, that's a pretty low level.. .But with the ladder, she could climb up several steps and photograph above her head level." Editor: Mary Lou Beatty Conditions, by all accounts, were difficult. Lange was on the road for Assistant Editors: Constance Burr Susan Q. Jaffe six to eight weeks at a time as a "photographer-investigator" for the Ellen Marsh federal government earning $191.66 a month. Getting film to final print Editorial Assistants: Amy Lifson was daunting; Lange was swamped, and for a time her negatives were Nadine Ekrek developed by a not-yet-famous Ansel Adams. "She sent the film packs to me in Yosemite," Adams recalls. "They'd still come smelling of Editorial Board: Marjorie Berlincourt, mildew. You have no idea of the heat. August in the South on the farms George F. Farr, Jr., Guinevere Griest, Donald Gibson, James Herbert, Thomas and all that damp. You opened the packet, smelled the marshes and Kingston, Jerry Martin, Carole Watson whew! Even then some of them were damaged by the humidity." Between 1935 and 1939, Lange and her colleagues documented the hard times in 270,000 photographs. They were not alone. In New York Marketing Director: Joy Evans City, nearly three hundred writers were working for the Federal Writ­ ers' Project, producing histories and guidebooks of peoples and places. Design: Crabtree & Jemison, Inc. Novelists Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison contributed to The Negro in New York; John Cheever was an editor on the New York City Guide. The opinions and conclusions expressed in Humanities are those of the authors and do As for Lange, by 1939 she had put together enough material for a not necessarily reflect Endowment policy. book, An American Exodus. But by that time attention was turning from Material appearing in this publication, except economic hard times to the far-off rumblings of war. Few copies were for that already copyrighted, may be freely reproduced. Please notify the editor in sold, Heyman tells us, and the book was remaindered. advance so that appropriate credit can be Today 23,000 of Lange's prints reside in the Oakland Museum, given. Humanities (ISSN 0018-7526) is published bimonthly for $13 per year by the together with private letters and memorabilia given by her husband National Endowment for the Humanities, Paul. "Documentary photography," she writes, "records the social 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, scene of our time. It mirrors the present and documents for the future. D.C. 20506. Second-class postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing Its focus is man in his relation to mankind. It records his customs at offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to work, at war, at play, or his round of activities through twenty-four Humanities, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506. Annual subscription hours of the day, the cycle of the seasons, or the span of a life." rate: $13.00 domestic, $16.25 foreign. Two —Mary Lou Beatty years: $26.00, $32.50. Telephone: 202/606-8435. Fax: 202/606-8240. 2 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 1993 HUMANITIES THE MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Page 4 Page 6 Page 24 The New NEH Chairman Other Features 4 Sheldon Hackney 6 American Icons: Images of 19 Humanities Online Dorothea Lange By Jane Rosenberg By Therese Thau Heyman Electronic formats broaden Exhibitions Haunting portraits recall a humanities projects. desperate time. 30 In Focus 21 City on the Edge 11 Hard Times in New York Thomas McClanahan By Ellen Marsh By Kenneth R. Cobb Atlanta without its myths. WPA writers captured 31 Noteworthy Manhattan's pace and attitude 24 The Herndons: in the thirties. "Oh Yeah?" 32 Calendar The Black Upper Class at the Turn of the Century 16 From a Filmmaker's Perspective By Maggie Riechers Humanities Guide Leadership and privilege among By Laura Randall a new class of entrepreneurs. Henry Hampton recreates the era of Joe Louis and 34 Current NEH-Supported Marian Anderson. 28 The Age of Rubens Fellowships and Seminars By Janis Johnson 18 State Projects The first major survey of Flemish 46 Deadlines Baroque art in the United States. Chronicling the American experience from New Deal murals to oral histories. HUMANITIES 3 NIVERSITIES EXIST to T he E ndow m ent' s create new knowledge and to preserve and N ew C h airm an: communicate knowl­ Uedge. The NEH, as a sojt of university without walls, through its research, education, and public programs, is engaged in the same effort. I am dedi­ cated to the proposition that we can improve the human condition through knowledge and that our hope for tomorrow in this troubled world depends on the sort of understanding that can come through learning. I have great respect for the NEH. It is the single most important institution in American life promoting the humanities, and it has a long record of accomplishment. I believe there are things that can be done to extend and broaden the impact of the NEH as it fulfills its statutory task of stimulating the humanities. I like to think of the humanities as human beings recording and thinking about human experience and the human condition, preserving the best of the past and deriving new insights Sh eld o n H a c k n ey in the present. One of the things that the NEH can do is to conduct a national conversation around the big s a scholar, author, teacher and university adminis­ joining the faculty in 1965 and serving as provost from A trator, Sheldon Hackney has compiled a distin­ 1972 to 1975. guished record during a career that has spanned more An award-winning author on the history of the South, than three decades. Hackney regularly taught undergraduate courses at Hackney, who becomes the sixth chairman of the Penn. He is the author of Populism to Progressivism in National Endowment for the Humanities, has been Alabama (1969), which won the year's Albert J. Beveridge president of the University of Pennsylvania for the past prize for the best book on American history and the twelve years. Before joining Penn, Hackney had been Southern Historical Association's 1970 Charles Sydnor president of Tulane University for five years. Hackney award. He also wrote Populism: The Critical Issues (1971), began his academic career at Princeton University, co-authored Understanding the American Experience: 4 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1993 questions: what is the meaning of life, What holds us together as a nation and external circumstances of those lives, what is a just society, what is the what do citizens owe to each other? but in their internal meaning. nature of duty, and so on. In this big What is the relationship of the individ­ Every human experience is enhanced conversation, it is not the function of ual to the group in a society whose by higher levels of knowledge. When I the NEH to provide answers but to political order is based upon individual listen to a piece of music, I may like it insure a discussion, to create a forum rights and in which group membership and think it beautiful, but the person in which all voices can be heard. is still a powerful social influence? who knows the historical context of its Because they are not just for the composition understands what the few but for everyone, no single T h e c o u n t r y h a s n e v e r composer was trying to accomplish approach to the NEH mandate is technically and can compare the adequate. There is a need for bal­ NEEDED THE HUMANITIES MORE. composition and the performance to ance among research aimed at cre­ others will get infinitely more out of W e NOT ONLY FACE THE CHAL­ ating new knowledge, educational the experience than I will.