A recent history of using photography as a subversive tool to challenge the state.
The Great Depression.
A good example was Dorothy Lang "There is a long tradition of documentary photographers working within public administrations. Doretha Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936) – probably the best-known image of the Great Depression – was taken for the Historical Section of FDR’s (Roosevelts) Farm Security Administration. Like all bureaucrats, Lange faced institutional constraints and her fair share of frustrations. While she learned to navigate public institutions, others chafed against them" Can Photographers Influence Politics? (e-ir.info)
Yet, Lang's image called Migrant Mother would shock the world as her images would be printed in Time Magazine. The notable impact of an image cannot be underestimated.
Another photographer who once worked for FDRs Historical Section was photographer Walker Evens (1939) but left due to the constraints to report imposed upon him. Walker Evans created the image in a book called "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men for Fortune (Agee and Evans 1939)" which looked at the lives of impoverished builders of skyscrapers. Though FDRs "New Deal" promised to rebuild America and put people back to work, there was still massive poverty in the late 1930s. It is clear that the images by Walter Evans would have not been published if he was still with FDRs Historical Section.
The 1960s.
The 60s was a time of social and racial division in America. The Civil Rights Movement was demanding laws called Jim Crow Laws going back to the C19 were repealed and black people having the same rights as white people was demanded. The president Lyndon Johnson promised his government would look at this and put more money into creating a better country through eradicating poverty. It became known as The Great Society. However, the space race and the fight against communism would be more of a motivation then eradicating poverty in black ghettos.
Vietnam was divided in half communist and half capitalist. America was in Vietnam as advisors but after some time, they saw their role as freeing Vietnam from the tyranny of communism. The war divided opinion. Opinion was more divided when Lyndon Bains Johnsons government was more divided when teenagers aged 19+ where drafted into the army to fight in Vietnam.
Photographers went to Vietnam as war correspondents to cover the fighting. One photographer took an image which would change public opinion completely and show the USA not as liberators from communism, but instead, an imposing force which had waged a war on poor indigenous people with the full force of the military industrial complex.
1970s
Nick Ut took this image called Napalm Girl in 1972. The image showed children running down the road with skin on fire after a village was attacked by the Americans. This image would win The Pulitzer Prize and do its bit in ending the war.
A family flees toward Saigon along Route 13, 1972. Nick Ut
Nick Ut, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist, Retires This Month - Saigoneer
The 1970s-1980s.
The images we have looked at have all been photographs, however, Gee Vaucher used photomontage among other techniques.
According to Gee Vaucher Artworks | Art Collectorz "Gee Vaucher is a visual artist who was born in 1945 in Dagenham, East London.
Her work with Anarcho-punk band Crass was seminal to the 'protest art' of the 1980s. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change. In her collection of early works (1960-1997) Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist Monsters, Dagenham, East London. Vaucher can be seen to have expressed her strong anarcho-pacifist and feminist views in her paintings and collage. Vaucher also uses surrealist styles and methods"Vauchers work influenced me as a young punk in the 1980s. She was in a Anarcho-punk band called Crass from 1977-1984. Her work appeared on many of their album covers and was a clear reaction to the Conservatives and Republicans both in America and Britain in the 1980s. The policies of the Thatcher government and "the special relationship" between Reagan and Thatcher was not seen as healthy. Peter Kennard's The Haywain represented this with Cruise Missiles on UK soil.
Crass Records - Bing images
Vaucher used montages, photomontages and graphic design to create her subversive content. Her politics in the 1980s would have been considered by mainstream society as radical but in the C21, quite tame. in some respects, we are all feminists now. The dictionary definition of "feminist" is anybody who believes in equality for women. Most people think that should be a given in any society.
Vaucher and Peter Kennard share the same concept when it comes to their work. I find myself immensely attracted to this style of protest.
Peter Kennard has been using art to challenge the state since the 1980s. His well known appropriation of John Constables The Haywein was an attack on Ronald Reagans government to deploy Cruise Missiles on UK soil. The idealised painting of rustic country life in the 19th century was juxtaposed with several American Cruise Missiles in the back of a cart was ironic and used humour to deal with a serious issue.
It is the responsibility of the photographer and the artist to use their practice to challenge society, corporations and governments. it is looking increasingly like news outlets are no longer independent and all are informed by the state what to report. Therefore, if the media is under threat, it is the job of artists and photographers to challenge them. The internet has given artists and photographers a platform which has a global reach and is free to use. This resource and using my practice to challenge is something I wish to do in the future.
House of Commons. Where Everybody in the country gets a kick in....Mark Baigrie
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