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Monday 1 August 2016

Despedida

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http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a05000/8a05400/8a05460v.jpg

 National Association of Manufacturers signboard, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Wallace Stevens: from Sunday Morning (1915) in Harmonium, 1923


 
File:Under the elevated railway, Chicago, Illinois fsa8a06711u.jpg

Under the Elevated tracks, Chicago, July 1940

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Under the El tracks, Chicago, July 1941

  Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Under the El tracks, Chicago, July 1941

 Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Hartford, Wisconsin, Fourth of July, 1941

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Chicago, Illinois, July 1941

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Chicago, Illinois, July 1941
 
  Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Chicago, July 1941

  Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Policemen, Chicago, July 1941

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
[Somewhere in the Upper Midwest], late summer 1941

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
[Somewhere in the Upper Midwest], late summer 1941

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

[Somewhere in the Upper Midwest], October 1940

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Fargo, North Dakota, October 1940

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a05000/8a05300/8a05380v.jpg
 

Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940
 
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a05000/8a05300/8a05395v.jpg

Business section, Dubuque, Iowa, with houses of the rich seen on cliffs in background, April 1940

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8c17000/8c17000/8c17048v.jpg 

Dubuque, Iowa, gas station at night, April 1940

Image, Source: b&w film copy neg. of print

Boy hopping freight train, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Boy hopping freight train, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Boy hopping freight train, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Man in hobo jungle killing turtle to make soup, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Man in hobo jungle, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Man in hobo jungle, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939

  Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Unemployed men in Gateway District, Minneapolis, September 1939

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
 
Child who lives on the other side of the tracks, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Railroad depot, Grand Island, Nebraska, November 1938
 
Image, Source: digital file from original neg.

Unemployed man, Omaha, Nebraska, November 1938

Image, Source: digital file from original neg.

Farm wife waiting in the car while her husband attends auction, Oskaloosa, Kansas, October 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Boys playing with bows and arrows near railroad yards, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Car belonging to "white spot" enthusiast ("...the white spot of the nation, no luxury tax, no bonded debt, highways all paid for..."), Omaha, Nebraska, November 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Boy with family belongings in automobile, Yates Center, Kansas, October 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film
  
 Bidding on futures, Minneapolis Grain Exchange, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Freight car loaded with sacks of flour, Pillsbury Mills, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 1939
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Migrant woman from Arkansas in roadside camp, Berrien County, Michigan, July 1940
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Migrant child from Arkansas in roadside camp, Berrien County, Michigan, July 1940

Image, Source: digital file from original neg.

Liquor store, Omaha, Nebraska, November 1938
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Main Street, Yates Center, Kansas, October 1938
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Abandoned farm, Nebraska, October 1938

Image, Source: digital file from b&w film copy neg. from file print
 
Girl and movie poster, Cincinnati, Ohio: photo by John Vachon, October 1938
 
Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Man reading newspaper in Fountain Square, Cincinnati, Ohio: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Girl watching the sesquicentennial parade, Cincinnati, Ohio: photo by John Vachon, October 1938

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Fox chained to automobile, Moorehead, Minnesota, October 1940

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a32000/8a32500/8a32539v.jpg
 
Grand Forks, North Dakota: photo by John Vachon, October 1940
Photos by John Vachon (1914-1975) (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

José Emilio Pacheco: Despedida



#JohnVachon's portrait of a carbon black plant worker is heartbreaking and perfect: image via Carly Piersol @piersolphoto, 23 May 2016



Fracasé. Fue mi culpa. Lo reconozco.
Pero en manera alguna pido perdón o indulgencia:
Eso me pasa por intentar lo imposible.

José Emilio Pacheco (1939-2014): Despedida

 


Cincinnati, Ohio, 1942. Photo by #JohnVachon: image via Leticia Garcia @Ms_Golightly, 14 June 2015


#JohnVachon: image via Jarry @Jarry1873, 23 November 2015


 #JohnVachon - #TimesSquare on a rainy day, #NewYork, 1943: image via Emanuela Morelli @EmanuelaMorell1, 13 October 2015


#JohnVachon Madison Avenue on a rainy day NYC Marzo 1943: image via Cielia Mussari @CieliaMussari, 8 April 2015   Milan, Lombardy

6 comments:

tpw said...

Beautiful post. The past seeming to be right there, ready for us to return to it.

Hilton said...

Haunting - the photos and the poems. At least among my Filipino friends, a Despedida is a party wishing someone good luck before they embark on their journey. I'm not suer we ever left. Thanks.

Hazen said...

Superb post, Tom. No hay ningún fracaso por aquí.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

. . . Downward to darkness, on extended wings. . . .

Thanks for this Tom, Vachon's photos in relation to these lines from Stevens . . . casts light and shadows in both directions (wow).

Sandra said...

thanks for those poems Tom...


Volverás a mi huerto y a mi higuera;
por los altos andamios de las flores
pajareará tu alma colmenera

(de Elegía a Ramón Sijé - Miguel Hernández)

TC said...

Many thanks to all for good words.

Ah, past... are we there? or here?

"...not sure we ever left"

John Vachon's story very closely parallels that of the FSA project in which he learned how to take and love and study and file pictures. He was hired in 1938, a new-in-town kid from Minnesota who knew nothing at all about photography, and, before he had yet learned to take pictures himself, was assigned, as a low-level office clerk, to do captions, keep the files organized... it was this organizing and filing which began and remains to this day largely responsible for the archiving of a magnificent project to which a dozen or more terrific photographers, all of them quite a bit more experienced than JV himself, gave many years of intense work at ridiculous wages... the standard house salary for photographers was $5 a day! ... and perhaps even harder to comprehend from the vantage of now, virtually none of the work was published at the time, the purpose was simply to make and keep an accurate and honest record of how people in America were living, particularly those people in whose lives nobody had ever been interested, because they were, in so many of the places where the photographers went, neither rich nor famous.

And so it is that we do now have this record of how people lived, then, in case anybody should ever wish to look at, and possibly even learn from it.