tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3473433913576817123..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: "The detail and the deeper meaning of everything American": Remembering the FSA Photo ProjectUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35295916116316490862010-08-23T06:25:15.514-07:002010-08-23T06:25:15.514-07:00Aditya, your words remind me of Keats' dictum ...Aditya, your words remind me of Keats' dictum that for the poetic to happen, we must feel it on the pulse. I think that's the beauty of the art and skill and effort -- and the historical moment (and for that matter let's not forget the Kodachrome) -- enabling these photographers. They redeem a time we are unconsciously accustomed to thinking of as happening in black & white by filling it with colour, flooding our senses, allowing us to feel it on the pulse. <br /><br />And now the memories are returned to us, the distances are diminished, and we can, for moments at a time, enter into these people and places, as you say we must...TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-45288674222261018632010-08-23T00:20:39.542-07:002010-08-23T00:20:39.542-07:00Its an entirely wonderful stretch of memories. And...Its an entirely wonderful stretch of memories. And by the end you get a feeling you gotta be with these people at their places wearing their brains and skins and running by their pulses and seeing and sizing things and people up with their senses.adityahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16078144194220301083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84116418707777300972010-08-15T07:50:08.880-07:002010-08-15T07:50:08.880-07:00Tom,
Thanks for this last note on things from Jac...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for this last note on things from Jack Delano -- who IS doing anything like this these days? And Curtis, thank you for YOUR note on 8.14. . . .STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-18305395867514938842010-08-14T16:06:43.781-07:002010-08-14T16:06:43.781-07:00Thanks, everyone.
John, your question --
I wond...Thanks, everyone.<br /><br />John, your question -- <br /><br />I wonder what such a project today would find about the heart of the American people. Would it be found at Walmart?<br /><br />-- has been in my mind too.<br /><br />And it did come up also in Richard Roud's 1965 interview with the Delanos (in Puerto Rico, where they had by then settled, and where Jack was doing great work in music and the writing of children's books): <br /><br /><br />JACK DELANO: Well, I think it is a great shame that the project didn't continue, of course, because, as Irene said, there were a certain number of years during which we were all working, and then it all stopped. What in the files represents the work of those years. After that there isn't anything. But think of what has been happening in the United States since 1945, since the War, after the War, the transformation and all kinds of social movements that have been happening in the United States since the War. This would have driven Roy mad, insane to cover all this. I mean, our whole . . . if nothing more than our attitude toward science and space and the effect that it has had on the whole country, just as one symbolic thing, one example. What's been happening in education in the United States in ten years is another example of compete revolution in thinking about all these things which reflects itself in attitudes and human behavior; and in a way the industrial revolution in the United States after the War with plastics and transistor radios, computers, and all of these things. These are the things that have been changing in American life since the War. These are the kinds of things that properly would be fields in which the project would be working -- in which we would all be working. Well, nobody has been except as reflected in newspaper stories and other things which are in somebody's file somewhere about the country but never from this point of view of the project. I'm just saying this because I think it's tragic that the project did just simply cut off and stop when the country didn't stop and all the things that we were looking at didn't stop. They continued developing in an extraordinary way. But your question about how the file could be used . . . I remember Roy was not only a collector of photographs, but he collected all kinds of things, including people, and Alice collected buttons, but Roy -- this collector's attitude and this idea that everything is useful and you've got to have it, and if you don't need it now, you'll need it later, or somebody else is going to need it. This was something that he was always impressing on us, too. Roy had a great admiration for Sears, Roebuck catalogues, for example. He felt that they should be kept and that they were very valuable -- Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward's catalogue of thirty or forty years ago is an extraordinary historical document of what dress was like at that time, and appliances, and automobiles and parts, and all kinds of things. In the same way, the file will be valuable as the years go by, in this same sense also. Even now it is valuable in that sense because of the material contained in it about social mores of the time, about . . . well, things have changed already considerably just in these twenty-odd years and the files gives us such a vivid picture of what things were like at that time, not only in the depressed areas but in all the other things we covered.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-81221925953492281012010-08-14T10:48:18.271-07:002010-08-14T10:48:18.271-07:00Steve, I really love today's poem and vision. ...Steve, I really love today's poem and vision. It's hard to pick out a single line/thought/image. They're all so great. I'm glad I checked in again on this highly disordered day.Curtis Robertsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28357395534899198762010-08-14T08:17:26.264-07:002010-08-14T08:17:26.264-07:00Tom,
yes, "the detail and deeper meaning of ...Tom,<br /><br />yes, "the detail and deeper meaning of everything . . . open your eyes and be looking" ---<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />8.14<br /><br />grey whiteness of fog against invisible<br />top of ridge, edge of black pine branch <br />in foreground, wave sounding in channel<br /><br /> systems of previous painting,<br /> itself drawn from those<br /><br /> as its focus, look of object<br /> its blackness, radiance<br /><br />grey-white of fog reflected in channel,<br />circular green pine on tip of sandspitSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-91839594623725534122010-08-14T07:21:36.062-07:002010-08-14T07:21:36.062-07:00oppppsss I forgot the link:
http://www.livinghis...oppppsss I forgot the link:<br /><br />http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html<br /><br />(who ever said "poets are smart" ?)Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35231052469855770422010-08-14T07:19:20.727-07:002010-08-14T07:19:20.727-07:00pee est:
check out Florence's (and the others...pee est:<br /><br />check out Florence's (and the others' stories/'membrances, here:<br /><br />http://www.ganzelgroup.com/books.html<br /><br />my dad once said<br /><br />"we were so poor four of us shared one pair of shoes."Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11743072928107694472010-08-14T07:11:41.331-07:002010-08-14T07:11:41.331-07:00here is a neat site re:
The Dust Bowl
and picture...here is a neat site re:<br />The Dust Bowl<br /><br />and pictures of the exact cloud / day of it<br /><br />Black Sunday, April 14, 1935<br /><br />I was thinking that, just maybe, all of our Atomic Bomb testing might have caused the Cloud (clouds)<br /><br />but as near as I can place first A-bomb OPEN AIR testing was 1944<br /><br />I think Oppenheimer was year in Nazi German in 1935.<br /><br />ever hear his 1945 radio speech...?Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-38193129078239038312010-08-14T05:25:58.398-07:002010-08-14T05:25:58.398-07:00I think I first heard the silly, but communicative...I think I first heard the silly, but communicative, expression, "me three" (following an utterance of "me too") in a Three Stooges short when I was a child. I guess I need to say "me four" about this. This is really extraordinary material. Regarding John's question, I don't think contemporary America's heart would be found at Wal-Mart, but that isn't meant either to disparage or praise Wal-Mart. I do think that modern technology tools, such as computers and internet communications, which have the potential to connect us deeply, can have exactly the opposite effect and are creating a nation of people isolated from each other in "self-selecting" situations. One thing I don't like about the new portable reading devices, such as the Kindle, is that they make all books look alike. I understand why they are practical (I met a person who was going to Africa for several months and she told me that having a Kindle saved her many pounds of additional luggage weight), but they erase the minutiae that Mariynn mentions.Curtis Robertsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-27090489087734311192010-08-14T03:16:11.959-07:002010-08-14T03:16:11.959-07:00Make that three of us. I wonder what such a proje...Make that three of us. I wonder what such a project today would find about the heart of the American people. Would it be found at Walmart?John Sarsgardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06514074489901835607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74254310589097751962010-08-14T01:24:37.892-07:002010-08-14T01:24:37.892-07:00Thank you Marylinn, I feel exactly the same way ab...Thank you Marylinn, I feel exactly the same way about this.<br /><br />And it appears that makes a sum total of exactly two of us.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-6148588466768131372010-08-13T11:12:18.372-07:002010-08-13T11:12:18.372-07:00The FSA Photo Project achieved its goal of finding...The FSA Photo Project achieved its goal of finding the heart of the American people. The photographers understood there was connection between the people they met and the minutiae of their lives; our details do tell our stories. I would be heartened to see your revisiting of this work and these times displayed for a wider audience. All the lessons we will ever need wait for us in the past.Marylinn Kellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02759437467691163658noreply@blogger.com