Abstract

GOYENECHE-GOMEZ, Edward. Documentary Photography in Times of Crisis: Pictorial History and Dramatic Humanism. Palabra Clave [online]. 2019, vol.22, n.4, e2246. ISSN 0122-8285.  https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2019.22.4.6.

This article analyzes the use of documentary photography in the photographic project of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Historical Section carried out between 1935 and 1943. It was part of the propaganda program of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration during the New Deal and responded to the social and economic crisis caused by the Great Depression. The main objective is to delve into the discussion about a kind of aesthetic point of view that is crystallized in a dramatic humanism and supported by a pictorial historical archive structure. Contradictorily, throughout the 20th century, this became the parameter for the prevailing definition of documentary, despite its nationalist-populist political and ideological origin. Building on a relational analysis, documentary photography is studied as a category, social practice and knowledge device that conveys a specific vision and social representation within a complex arrangement of particular economic, political and cultural components. A qualitative documentary method is employed based on primary sources, including an aesthetic and discursive relational analysis of the program’s photographs. The article reveals -and this revelation is what makes it novel- the weave of definitions of documentary that had to be developed and brought together, combining factual, dramatic and artistic elements, around the idea of a pictorial history whose humanistic promise would restore the social ties of American unity.

Keywords : Photography; documentary films; pictures; illustrations; art history; humanism; propaganda.

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