Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

"As your body grows bigger

Your mind grows flowered

It's great to learn

Cause knowledge is power!"

Knowing things makes a person interesting. An interesting person makes for good conversation. We are about to have a conversation. It is a monologue between me the writer and you the reader. What thoughts come to mind when thinking about the Great Depression? Perhaps a history or economics professor was lecturing on it in class. Or maybe not a whole lot. Depending on what you know it may change how you view the Great Depression. Walker Evans took photographs of 3 white tenant families in Alabama. Looking at the photographs one can gather that life was difficult to be a sharecropper during the Great Depression. Until looking at these photographs I did not really think about how life was different in the south compared to the north. More rural life versus the urban setting. The photographs of the people look almost sad and downtrodden. The houses that these families lived in were bare and were only the necessities to survive. Seeing life that makes me appreciate the things I have. How I had toys to play with instead of forks and spoons. These photographs remind me of the book "How the Other Half Lives" written by Jacob Riis. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and "How the Other Half Lives" are both photographs of people living in poor living conditions. The photographs are very interesting and I did find the exhibition very worthwhile. Looking at photographs now usually people say "smile" or "say cheese!" before taking the photograph. I did not see a single smile. The thought put into the photographs is amazing. There are many photographs I found myself thinking about. In the exhibit there were very thought provoking images. A few that stuck out was the shoe shining place. This was very interesting once the pair of black shoes was pointed out. Also the slang definition of shine was used as derogatory term for African Americans. I was wondering how accurate this photograph was and if certain things were placed to convey ideals. I also then realized how the south viewed racism. Not only was the depression hard on everyone, African Americans must have had it even harder. This is very relevant to the history of photography because if we take a look back to early history of African Americans they were slaves and now we have Barrack Obama as president. There have been great leaps in overcoming social and racial differences in society.

Andrew Buchanan

Works Cited:

http://www.tenant.net/Community/Riis/title.html

http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/