Different Eras: Lessons From The Rising Star Grant
Aug 18
Posted by Bruce101 in New Mexico, Rural America
June 2010, Roper girl texting, Portales, NM, by Bruce Berman
1936, Daughter of Drought stricken farmer, by Russell Lee/FSA
Commentary by Bruce Berman
Hard Times. That’s what they called the 1930′s.
We hear this word a lot now, too, to describe our times.
These two photos, above, might be a good description of what are the differences between now and then.
In the 1930′s the material wealth of people diminished greatly as the country fell into Depression. Eventually, there got to be, for many people, well, nothing.
In the 2010′s, it may be, we got to a point where, well, we don’t have everything.
And here we have an image (Russell Lee’s) of a child in her farm home taken for the FSA to show how the Depression was impacting rural people. It is true that a photo does not necessarily “tell the truth.” Photographs don’t tell truths, they suggest them. If we trust the photographer and the editor to choose photos that represent what they consider to be atypical of a certain situation, and if this photo does that, than these two photos, ideally, represent some kind of times, hard and soft.
The “Hard Times,” of the 1930′s of Russell Lee had an unemployment rate that averaged 20%, reaching as high as 23.6% in 1932, the year of FDR’s election. Even by 1940, after seven years of FDR and the “Alphabet Agencies,” trying to change the course of the economic downslide, the unempolyment rate was only down to 14.6%, more than four points higher than it is today, in our “Hard Times.” In the 1930′s, there was only a rudimentary social net existent. Our unemployment rate is currently at 9.7% and was at 4.5% average for most of the decade until 2008. The policies and programs of the W.P.A., (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration) and Lee’s Farm Security Administration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration), were designed to relieve the deep consequences of the Great Depression and Lee’s photographs were used by the FSA to gain support for those programs.
We now have 99 weeks of extended unemployment, Medicare for retirees, Medicaid for those who can’t afford insurance, Aid To Dependent Children, and on and on. We have a strong social net that did not exist in the 1930′s (it began in the New Deal of FDR, in 1930′s).
Then, many couldn’t find enough to eat. Now, many of us seem to eat to obesity and losing weight is a national obsession.
Then, people were wiring their cars together -and praying they’d stay wired- to enable them to have a chance to migrant to better places, places where they might find work.
Now, we buy the latest digital technology because we want to, own and drive cars, considering a four year old car, and older, an old car, and we consider ourselves sinking into deep poverty if we don’t own a house, and preferably, own more than one.
In the upper photo above, Kaitlin Strube, 16, of Lubbock, Texas takes a moment from competing in a roping competition in Portales, NM, to text a friend. She -and most people of her generation, consider this a necessity.
Hard Times?
Behind the scenes of this photograph is the fact that the Strube family got to Portales by driving an enormous new American pick up truck. Behind the truck was an enormous horse trailer. In the trailer was a horse that cost over $100 per week to maintain (I don’t know the cost of this particular horse…it varies). All of this energy and material is used to get to a roping arena to have fun.
And it is fun!
Roping is a big sport in Central New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Arizona and is a tradition that goes back to early ranching days. It’s fun, it’s healthy and it’s American. It is not the activity of a country sinking into poverty.
So, here we have Kaitlyn Strube, 16, Lubbock, Texas, texting on her cell phone between runs at a Barrel Racing event in Portales, New Mexico, a teenager of her times.
None of this is a criticism of the Strube’s.
Contrarily, they -and many Americans today- are living in a highly affluent society that has food, housing, education, and insurance, and they can’t even remember what The Great Depression was all about. How could they? The Russell Lee Road project was a chance for me to remember, to learn, to take a tally, to see where we were and where we are.
Food, housing, clothes, sundries, entertainment. Most of us have it all.
Hard Times?
Not now. Not like then. And, maybe there were some soft linings then, too.
The photographs of Russell Lee are inclined to show people trying to maintain, to make it through, to do the best and then a little better, in Hard Times.
In my journeys through New Mexico I found people like the Strube’s, people like the family in the old Plymouth as they participate in an Old Timer’s Parade in Magdalena. There was Darlene Pino, who’s family has lived in Magdalena for many generations, having a good time on the day she was crowned Queen of Old Timer’s Day. There was the Williams’ showing off their restored 1951 International Harvester pick up truck and the Rael’s training their horses. There was Mike Wilbone who is mining his exotic minerals “for fun,” in the old mine he bought, up in the mountains, in a mine that used to be for mining gold.
Everywhere I went this past year on the 4500 journey for the Rising Star Grant awarded to myself and my colleague Mary Lamonica, I found Americans at work and at play, worried about what could be coming, in stark contrast to what Lee found, 74 years before: Despair about what had already come (The Great Depression).
Lee, as a photographer, seemed motivated to try to find the joy left within people. It infuses his photographs, it is the hallmark of his work. His people, his photographs, shine with an energy and a hope, a confidence about the next days, the better times to come.
For me, 70 years after Lee lived in Pie Town, NM, my job, as a documentary photographer, was much simpler: just show how rural and small town New Mexicans live, in 2010.
My “Interim Report,” is this: People are doing OK. They’re a little apprehensive, but they’re living well, enjoying the bounty and expecting better times. In fact, I’d say, they know they’re coming.
So, we traveled Russell Lee’s Road.
Early on, I gave up the idea of emulating Lee. Rather, it became clear to me, that this project had given me the opportunity to travel with Russell Lee, looking at the places he looked at (and that have not much physically changed since then). I must admit, out on that road, on long trips across deserts and rolling hills and crossing the Great Divide, my windows down in 106 degree heat in an attempt to feel the 1930′s, I talked with Lee. Once in Yeso, NM, I lost a polarizing filter and was kicking myself over it. Then, I realized, Hey, Lee probably lost more than one filter in his day, too! In fact, he and I, like every other photographer, have strewn a trail of filters, and lens hoods and light meters and cable releases across these deserts and mountains and highways.
Photographic litterers. And, across these mountains and hills and towns, we all have kicked ourselves, but, as photographers with missions, we keep going on, to the next town, the next event, the next fresh new meeting with the people of these hidden and genuine byways, making due without the lost tools, forgetting that last loss in that last town, forgetting as quickly as possible and getting into the “moment.” Getting lost, for us photographers, is the pure pleasure of discovery, the satisfaction and privilege of reporting and documenting our times.
That moment in Yeso could have been the peak moment of my journey. It was when I realized what the trip was really about, what the Rising Star Grant was allowing me to do. I wasn’t following Lee anymore, I was traveling with Lee. There he was, sitting in my passenger seat, Russell Lee, a guy I always admired, enjoying the old U.S. 60, again, hanging out with another photographer who’d rather show how people want to live rather than showing the misfortune that has befallen them. We became fellow travelers.
I enjoyed Russell Lee’s company very much. He was a good companion for the summer of 2010. If he wasn’t just a metaphorical device (I think that’s what he was), I think he enjoyed my company too.
As always, when you do documentary photography, you learn a lot about what you are looking at and even more about yourself You expand by the act of having looked and witnessed and recorded.
Russell Lee’s Road was a fine adventure. I hope this project is useful to anyone interested in 1930′s, Documentary Photography, 2010 Documentary Photography, by writing about it. Russell Lee, and the open road. Doesn’t get much better than that. Most of all I hope it is a great pleasure for anyone looking at the work on this site and that it puts Lee’s times and our times in perspective.
Now we even have Grants for photographers to drive around for a summer photographing places that photographers from 70 years ago had once worked.
Dare I say it? Driving around for, more or less, fun.
I won’t forget it soon.
Tags: 1930’s Photography, New Mexico, Russell Lee, Small Town America
2 comments. Leave a Reply
campo marianAugust 21, 2010 at 5:53 pmwhat an interesting way to compare the depression eras!makes one ,upon reflection be thankful for small merciesReply
Frank ThayerAugust 23, 2010 at 8:30 amInteresting work and commentary. No doubt that black and white photos have more command potential than color. I also like flash fill with daylight, particularly with faces. Nice to see you exploring the real New Mexico.