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Compose a thoughtful reflection (minimum 400 words total) that connects the themes in Modules 9-12 to: text, self, and world. Make certain that your submission is formatted so that the section title is properly labeled in bold (i.e. Module to Text, Module to Self, Module to World) and is followed by your comment for that specific section. Write the word count on the top of your submission (In Microsoft Word go to Tools>Word Count)
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Lecture 9: Reframing America
Required Reading
The readings for this module are pdf articles available for download.
“Reframing America” by Terence Pitts
“The Family of Man A Reappraisal of ‘The Greatest Exhibition of All Time'” by
Bill Jay
Lecture
This module explores both, the aspects of immigration revealed through
photographs taken by immigrant artists from an exhibition titled “Reframing
America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers”, and the
commonality of mankind as portrayed in the seminal photography exhibit The
Family of Man .
“Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant
Photographers”
“Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers”
was originally one exhibition in a three-part exhibition series titled “Points of
Entry,” that was organized collaboratively, though curated individually, by the
Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA; the Center for Creative
Photography in Tucson, AZ; and The Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams
Center for Photography in San Francisco, CA.
Alexander Alland, Robert Frank, John Gutmann, Otto Hagel, Hansel Mieth,
Lisette Model, and Marion Palfi, are seven photographers who came to
America during the period between 1920–1950. Millions of people left their
homelands during that time to seek a better life in America. Often fleeing war,
revolution, and persecution, they came in search of freedom, as well as
economic and artistic opportunity. The photographers in this exhibition were
among these immigrants. Their work speaks of life in America and of their
feelings and experiences as immigrants in a new land. Like the farmers,
laborers, teachers, and musicians who came to America as immigrants, these
artists had ideas and dreams about what their new country would be like.
Partly because they looked at America with fresh eyes, and partly because
the America they found did not always correspond to the America they
expected, their photographs sometimes addressed issues that continue to
haunt this country: poverty, injustice, and intolerance. At the same time, they
recorded uniquely American themes such as the mass consumption of
consumer goods, jazz, and our nation’s love of the automobile. These artists
also brought European equipment, ideas, and training with them, which was to
have a tremendous influence on American photography. The result was a
startling new vision of America.
Alexander Alland
Alexander Alland was born in Russia in 1902. He became interested in
photography as a boy and made his own camera out of cardboard when he
was twelve. In 1923, fleeing civil war in his homeland and then again in
Turkey, he came to the United States on a steerage boat. He was just twentyone years old. On his second evening in America, he stood in Times Square
in New York City, completely fascinated by the people, the cars, the city lights,
and all things American. For Alland, being an American meant sharing “the
desire for happiness, prosperity, and liberty,” no matter what one’s racial or
national background might be. In his photography, he respected and
celebrated things that made people different. At the same time, he sought to
capture themes that unified people of many backgrounds. His own experience
gave him insight into the conflict that immigrants still face between their desire
to keep and remember the languages and traditions of their old country and
the need to learn the skills necessary to succeed in their new country. Alland
died in 1989.
Alexander Alland
Untitled, 1948
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
Alland’s photograph of a newspaper stand shows us evidence of a
multicultural society, one where many languages are spoken. A non-English
speaking immigrant would have needed to find work and a place to live and
would surely have welcomed a newspaper written in his or her native
language. Alland photographed this scene from eye level rather than from
above or below. This angle makes the view like our own, as it would be if we
were walking up to the newspaper stand.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph?
* Why do you think Alexander Alland made the rack of newspapers his subject?
* How many different languages can you count in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel in a new
country where you did not understand the language?
* What are some of the things you would be concerned about?
Alexander Alland
Photomontage, c. 1943
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
© Estate of Alexandra Alland
In the 1940s, Alland experimented with different ways to display photographs. He
produced large photomurals (billboard-size photographs) for the public library in Newark,
New Jersey. He also collaged many photographs into one image. A good example of
the latter is his Photomontage, which depicts well-dressed American children from many
racial backgrounds. Their images overlap a large map that shows where various ethnic
communities have developed in the United States. Their teacher is pointing out
locations on the map.
Note: the teacher is the photographer’s wife, Alexandra, and the pupil on her right is
their son, Alexander Alland, Jr.
Questions to consider:
* What do the words “America—A Nation of People from Many Countries” in the
photograph mean to you?
* How can you tell that this is a made-up scene rather than a real scene?
* What is the first thing you notice in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how the children look and feel?
* Do you think this is a realistic interpretation of life in America for these children at that
time? Why or why not?
* How can you tell that this photographic collage was not created very recently?
Robert Frank
Born into a Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, Robert Frank was fifteen when war broke
out across Europe. While his family was unharmed in Switzerland, he later said that
“being Jewish and living with the threat of Hitler must have been a very big part of my
understanding of people that were put down or who were held back.” Near the end of
the war, Frank took up photography as a way of breaking away from the restrictions of
his wealthy family and of Switzerland. In 1947 he moved to New York City for a year.
Subsequently, he began traveling the world and taking photographs for magazines such
as Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and the New York Times.
Frank’s first impression of America was one of delight. He stated that “when I got to
America I saw right away that everything was open, that you could do anything. And
how you were accepted just depended on what you did with it.” This optimistic opinion
of America would change. Over the next seven years, he became disillusioned with the
controls the magazines had over his work. In addition, as he experienced the fast pace
of life in America and observed the importance Americans placed on money, he saw a
country of great wealth, but little joy.
After winning a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in 1955, Frank, his wife Mary, and
their two children set off in their car on a series of cross-country trips. Frank’s intent was
to document a culture that was uniquely American. The result was the now-famous
book of Frank’s photographs called The Americans, which was first published in 1958.
Frank’s style of photography and the images he made for The Americans were not
widely accepted at first, perhaps because the America that Frank photographed wasn’t
the America that those born and raised here saw or wanted to see. Americans viewed
his photographs as a harsh criticism of his adopted country. His intention, however, was
not to censure America, but to capture the complex American experience. Other artists
were among the first to recognize that Frank’s style expressed, in a very personal way,
his feelings about this country. What better way to record a distressed society than with
odd views, glaring light, and different degrees of focus? Perfection did not have a place
in Frank’s troubled and complex vision of America. His approach to photography was
not what Americans were used to seeing in pictures. This kind of experimentation broke
existing rules in photography and resulted in images that seemed, to some, to lack craft
and refinement.
The Americans went on to become a major influence for artists during the 1960s
because they also identified with Frank’s modern approach to interpreting the world in
which they lived. Today, Frank divides his time between New York and Nova Scotia.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Charleston, South Carolina 1955-56
Questions to consider:
* Where was the artist when he took this photograph?
* What was left out of the frame?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feel of this close view?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light in this photograph?
* What parts of this image are in sharp focus? What parts are out of focus?
* Does having some parts in focus and some parts out of focus add to the mood?
How?
* What do you notice first? Discuss.
* Do you find that this is a confusing photograph? Why or why not?
* Do you think that sometimes the world is a confusing place? Explain.
Robert Frank: The Americans
Robert Frank established a new iconography for contemporary America,
comprised of bits of bus depots, lunch counters, strip developments, empty
spaces, cars, and unknowable faces. This iconography has b ecome a
common coin, [and] here the original acuity of Frank’s own sensibility is alive
and relevant.” — John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art
Robert Frank’s book The Americans represented a significant challenge to
America’s image of itself. Frank’s pictures broke all the rules of photography.
Photography before Frank was pristine: carefully focused, carefully lit. Frank
would intentionally lose focus, his work was shadowy a nd grainy, full of
unconventional cropping and angles. He broke the rules in order to be true to
his vision of America he saw in his travels across the country in 1955 and
1956. Most photojournalism made around the time Frank was photographing
The Americans was optimistic and upbeat, reflecting the attitude of a
prosperous post-war America. Such attitudes can be seen in the popular 1955
exhibition: The Family of Man. Frank’s work clashed with the prevailing trend
in photography. In 1958 he wrote: “…I do not anticipate that the onlooker will
share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on
his mind – something has been accomplished.” When the Americans was first
published abroad and in the U. S., it was sharply criticized. But the
popularization of the beat movement – the second edition of The Americans
featured an introduction by Jack Kerouac – helped Frank to reach a broader
and more accepting audience. Frank’s once avant-garde style on the 1950’s is
now taken for granted. We see it daily in print advertisements for jeans or in
music videos on MTV. But Frank’s original photographs are still extraordinary
and surprisingly contemporary. This exhibition at the Juanita Kreps Gallery courtesy of the Addison Gallery of Art – is a rare opportunity to see the vintage
photographs that radically changed photography and our relationship to it. -Elizabeth Kunreuther, Curator for the Center for Documentary Studies
That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music
comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank
has captured in the tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road
around practically forty-eight states in an old used car (on Guggenhiem
Fellowship) and with the agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange
secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before
on film. – Jack Kerouac, from his introduction to The Americans. In 1955, the
Swiss photographer Robert Frank traveled throughout the United States by
car and returned with a bleak portrait of what the American road had to offer.
As Kerouac writes in his introduction, Frank’s photographs had “sucked a sad,
sweet, poem out of America,” a sadness found in the forlorn looks of dime
store waitresses, funeral attendees, and human faces rendered
unrecognizable in the glare of jukeboxes. The slightly offset angles and the
blurred focus of many of the photographs suggest the n ervousness and
dislocation of the people they capture. Frank dispels any romantic notions of
the lingering pioneer spirit of America by presenting a landscape of people
and places absent of hope and promise. Though Swiss by birth, Frank
traveled the world before settling in the United States in 1953. He eventually
befriended the Beat poets (Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction to the book
The Americans) and became one of the key visual artists to document this
bohemian subculture in both photography and film, including the highly
influential cinematic work Pull My Daisy. Like the Beats, Frank sought to
reveal the profound tensions he saw in all strata of American society during
the outwardly optimistic 1950s. His photographic journey encompasses rich
and poor, black and white, north and south, offering a glimpse of what makes
these people and places truly American. In 1955, Robert Frank set out to
observe and photograph the United States. Supported by a grant from the
Guggenheim Foundation, he traveled across the country for two years. The
result was The Americans, a visionary work and a milestone in the history of
photography.
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
City Fathers (Hoboken) 1955
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Trolley–New Orleans, 1955-56
Robert Frank
(Swiss born American 1924- )
Political Rally, Chicago 1956
John Gutmann
Born in German in 1905, John Gutmann trained and exhibited as a painter. Fleeing Nazi
Germany in 1933, he immigrated to the United States. Before leaving Germany, he
bought a camera and arranged to sell photographs of America to be used in German
magazines. He turned to photography as a way of earning money during the Great
Depression in America when jobs were scarce.
Gutmann was fascinated with the new way of seeing the world that photography
provided. He thought of the camera as a human eye, which inspired him to photograph
whatever he saw, however he saw it. When he looked up in wonder at a multistory
parking garage (see Elevator Garage. Chicago, 1936), his camera looked up too.
John Gutmann
Elevator Garage. Garage. 1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
© John Gutmann
He described the American city as “foreign—a landscape in which buildings had
replaced mountains, automobiles had replaced trees, and neon and painted signs had
been substituted for flowers.” His pictures showed startling new views of familiar scenes.
American photographs were not always as daring and experimental with how they took
photographs at that time, so his work was though of as bold and modern. Gutmann
currently resides in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
John Gutmann
Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco, 1939
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
© John Gutmann
Photographing primarily in the street, Gutmann used his eye and his camera to capture
the exuberance and rhythm of America. He found Americans exotic and optimistic
despite the Depression and looming war. His interest in photographing things uniquely
American inspired Portrait of Count Basie. San Francisco in 1939. Jazz was an
American form of music popular for its modern sound. In this work, Gutmann has
captured the flare and style of a jazz performance by the High Hatters, with Count Basie
in the background. This scene was photographed during the World’s Fair in San
Francisco.
Gutmann photographed his subject from a worm’s-eye view. Notice, also, how the
framing of the image cuts or crops part of the singers from the view. At the time, this
approach to angle and framing was not widely used by American photographers, but
was a part of the new way of photographing that was being developed in Europe and
making its way to America. Such use was considered odd and daring.
Questions to consider:
* Where do you think Gutmann was standing when he took this photograph?
* What effect does the worm’s-eye view have?
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* What do you notice first when you look at this photograph? Why do you think you
noticed this first?
* What kinds of sounds would this scene produce?
* What adjectives would you use to describe this photograph?
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth
Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth were both born in Germany in 1909. They were fifteen
when they met in their homeland and began their lifelong involvement with writing and
photography. Both possessed a curiosity about the world and its people, and together
they left Germany to wander and work their way throughout Europe. Worried about the
economic problems of Europe and the rise of fascism in Germany, Hagel immigrated to
the United States in 1928. Having no money, he had to pay for his passage by working
on a freighter. Mieth followed him to San Francisco in 1930. They eventually married.
Together, they worked as laborers and migrant farm workers, turning to photography
and filmmaking whenever they could.
Hagel and Mieth were confronted with the harsh reality of the Depression in America in
the 1930s. Their first home in California was a tent. Mieth eventually began to
photograph for Time magazine, and both she and Hagel contributed a number of
photographs and photographic essays to Life magazine. Many times they collaborated
on a photograph. Both artists were interested in brining about a better understanding of
real life through their photographs. Their own difficult, working class backgrounds made
them sympathetic to the poor, the unemployed, and the labor unions. Hagel died in
1974. Mieth currently lives in northern California.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Hansel Mieth
Outstretched Hands, 1934
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Mieth and Hagel often photographed people who were struggling to make a living. In
this image, Hansel Mieth shows men vying for jobs at the San Francisco Waterfront in
1934.
To guide your students in a discussion, ask questions like:
* For what do you think these men are reaching?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how it makes you feel to know that these
men were unemployed and that they were reaching for job notices?
* What sounds would you expect to hear coming from this scene?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the overall feeling or mood of the
photograph?
* How does the framing add to this feeling?
* How does the angle add to this feeling?
* Have you ever felt desperate about anything in your life? How would you describe
that feeling?
* Do you think that this image communicates the desperation of these men to find
jobs?
Otto Hagel
The Window Washer, 1939
Gelatin silver print ©1998
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation
Otto Hagel once worked as a window washer in New York City. When asked why he
was employed as such, he replied, “Well, with the economy going bad, I want to be able
to see what the giants of industry are doing by looking into their windows!” From this
response we know that he had quite a sense of humor. Hagel’s The Window Washer is
actually a self-portrait. Hagel set up the photograph from inside the room in order to
record himself washing a window of a tall building, high above the streets of New York
City. This is a complicated picture that can be discussed formally for the way it looks
and for what it communicates.
Questions to consider:
* Where was the camera located when this photograph was taken?
* What do you notice first in this work? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* From what direction is the light coming? How can you tell?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are the shapes in this photograph primarily geometric or organic?
* Are there strong contrasts in this photograph?
* Does this photograph have enough variety to hold your interest?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the feeling or mood of this work?
Lisette Model
Lisette Model was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1901. Music
was her passion and she studied voice and piano. With Hitler’s rise to power in
Germany, the safety of Jewish people was in question, even in Austria. Model moved
with her family to France in 1926. There, she took up photography so that she would
have a practical skill on which to rely. Photography became both her medium of artistic
expression and her main source of livelihood.
In 1938, Model immigrated to New York City with her husband, who was a painter. She
fell in love with the city’s noisy, narrow streets, tall buildings, fast pace, and energy.
Throughout the next ten years she mainly photographed subjects she found on the city
streets.
Her powerful, though nonconventional, images of New York were frequently seen in
Harper’s Bazaar. It was through her role as a teacher, however, that Model had the
greatest impact on young photographers. For the thirty years before her death in 1983,
she taught her students to open their eyes and respond to their subjects with their
hearts.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPH
Lisette Model
Window Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York City. 1940
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
This image is from Model’s series of photographs of store windows. Photographing this
subject matter allowed her to include information from both sides of the street all at once,
as the reflections showed activity both inside and outside of the windows. By aiming her
camera directly at a window, she captured the feel of the city in a jumble of reflections
and shadows. Framing the view of a photograph in this way was daring and is an
example of the experimental approach to art that European photographers brought to
this country.
Questions to consider:
* How do you know that this is a photograph of a city scene?
* Where was the artist when she took this picture? How can you tell?
* What do you notice first in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it first?
* What is creating the shadow figures?
* Do you actually see any people in this photograph?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* Are there strong contrasts of light and dark?
* What kinds of sounds would you hear if you were in this scene?
Marion Palfi
“I came to the United States in 1940 at a very tragic time in human history and (it might
sound corny) there was this man Roosevelt President, and he talked to the people on
the radio and told about the Four Freedoms and the better world of tomorrow. One day,
I told myself, perhaps I can help with my camera . . .” recalled Marion Palfi. Born in
Berlin of Hungarian and German parents in 1907, Palfi followed her father’s career into
German theater and films. By 1932, her attention had turned to photography.
After fleeing Hitler’s army, first in Germany and then in Holland, she settled in New York
City. As she traveled through various American cities, she was troubled by the racial
intolerance she witnessed there and by the growing problems in urban centers. Using
her camera as a tool to record her concerns, Palfi brought a European perspective to
social issues in the United States, especially those involving poverty, racism, and
injustice. She was disturbed by the unwillingness or inability of American society to
recognize and change them.
Palfi began to describe herself as a “social research photographer.” She belonged to a
generation of artists who believed that art could and should effect social change. By
combining her art form with the study of society, Palfi explored and recorded groups that
remained invisible in America: the poor, the oppressed, and the victims of discrimination.
For the next thirty years she traveled across the country photographing these groups.
This intensive work resulted in the production of several large photographic essays,
passionate in their description of the disturbing things she witnessed. Palfi died in 1978.
READING THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Marion Palfi
Somewhere in the South, 1946-49
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
This photograph shows us a scene from a bus in the late 1940s. A black couple with a
baby sit, staring straight ahead, underneath the statement:THIS PART OF THE BUS
FOR THE COLORED RACE.” It would be almost ten years before the laws requiring
blacks to sit in the back of the bus, while whites sat in the front, would be changed.
Questions to consider:
* How would you describe the looks on the faces of the bus riders? Discuss.
* What was left out of the picture frame?
* Why do you think Palfi chose to photograph her subjects so closely?
* What adjectives would you use to describe how this image makes you feel?
* Do you think that photographs can communicate strong feelings? How?
* Do you think that photographs can be used to promote social change? How?
Marion Palfi
Los Angeles, Anti Klan Meeting Where Klan
Did Strike, 1946-49 from Signs of Discrimination
Gelatin silver print
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona
© Martin Magner
Here, we see a group of people, black and white, that are attending a meeting
organized to fight against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Once, while photographing the KKK
and its activities, Palfi had to smuggle her negatives out of the South because her life
was threatened.
Questions to consider:
* What is the first thing you notice in this photograph? Why do you think you noticed it
first?
* What adjectives would you use to describe the light?
* How does the light contribute to the mood of the work?
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
* What adjectives would you use to describe how you would feel if you were made to
sit in the back of a bus because of the color of your skin?
* How do you feel about the fact that, even though the U.S. Constitution declared that
no person could be discriminated against because of his or her race, the South had
laws that required blacks to sit apart from whites.
* What is the Ku Klux Klan?
* Is the KKK still active today?
* Why would white people join with blacks to fight the KKK?
Edward Steichen: The Family of Man
The Family of Man is an exhibition of photos mounted by Edward J. Steichen
in 1955 for the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). While offering
infinitely diverse images of human beings living in the 1950s, it nevertheless
emphatically reminds visitors that they all belong to the same big family. The
32 themes, arranged chronologically, reflect the subjects’ joys and sadnesses,
their satisfactions and their unhappinesses, and their longing for peace, but
also the reality of bloody conflict. They emphasize the role of democratic
structures and, in the exhibition’s conclusion, the United Nations’ role as the
only body capable of saving the world from the “scourge of war, which twice in
our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and [of reaffirming] faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in
the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (Charter of
the United Nations). Regarded as the “greatest photographic enterprise ever
undertaken”, it consists of 503 photographs taken by 273 photographers, both
professional and amateur, famous and unknown, from 68 countries. A huge
undertaking, with unique cultural and artistic dimensions, it had a considerable
influence on other exhibition organizers, stirred public interest in photography
and its tremendous ability to communicate, and conveyed a personal,
humanist message that was both courageous and provocative. The
photographers who took part included Dorothea Lange, Robert Capa, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Jack Delano, Margaret Bourke-White, Esther Bubley, Bert
Hardy, Edward Weston, Matthew Brady, Frank Scherschel, Wayne Miller, Eva
Arnold, Irving Penn, Consuelo Kanaga, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Bill Brandt, Russell
Lee, Carl Mydans, Ben Shahn and Marion Palfi.
Although the Family of Man has become a legend in the history of
photography, it went far beyond the traditional view of what an exhibition
should be. It may be regarded as the memory of an entire era, that of the Cold
War and McCarthyism, in which the hopes and aspirations of millions of men
and women throughout the world were focused on peace. Steichen’s
undertaking is still unique of its kind. Several photographic exhibitions were
more or less clearly inspired by it, for example The Family of Children and The
Family of Women by Jerry Mason, and the First World Photography Exhibition
organized by Karl Pawek in the 1960s for Stern magazine, but none of them
matched the visual dimension or the artistic coherence of the original
American exhibition. The very personal approach of Steichen arouses interest
and exercises minds to this day: There was a new surge of interest in the
exhibition following the opening of the Clervaux museum. Since June 1994
the museum has attracted over 163,000 visitors from all over the world, not
counting the 50,000 who went to see the restored collection in Toulouse,
Tokyo and Hiroshima in 1992 and in the winter of 1993-1994, 38 years after
the first tour. This was the final “round-the-world” trip by the exhibition before it
was permanently installed in the museum.
Visit the Virtual Tour of The Family of Man Exhibition (Links to an external site.)Links to
an external site.
Copyright © Ron Herman, 2007
Lecture 9: Reframing America
Required Reading
The readings for this module are pdf articles available for download.
“Reframing America” by Terence Pitts
“The Family of Man A Reappraisal of ‘The Greatest Exhibition of All Time'” by
Bill Jay
Lecture
This module explores both, the aspects of immigration revealed through
photographs taken by immigrant artists from an exhibition titled “Reframing
America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers”, and the
commonality of mankind as portrayed in the seminal photography exhibit The
Family of Man .
“Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant
Photographers”
“Reframing America: Through the Eyes of Seven Immigrant Photographers”
was originally one exhibition in a three-part exhibition series titled “Points of
Entry,” that was organized collaboratively, though curated individually, by the
Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA; the Center for Creative
Photography in Tucson, AZ; and The Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams
Center for Photography in San Francisco, CA.
Alexander Alland, Robert Frank, John Gutmann, Otto Hagel, Hansel Mieth,
Lisette Model, and Marion Palfi, are seven photographers who came to
America during the period between 1920–1950. Millions of people left their
homelands during that time to seek a better life in America. Often fleeing war,
revolution, and persecution, they came in search of freedom, as well as
economic and artistic opportunity. The photographers in this exhibition were
among these immigrants. Their work speaks of life in America and of their
feelings and experiences as immigrants in a new land. Like the farmers,
laborers, teachers, and musicians who came to America as immigrants, these
artists had ideas and dreams about what their new country would be like.
Partly because they
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