Many of the images we have seen so far reflect contemporary use of visual images to call viewers to action. Documentary photography often served the purpose of exposé, confronting viewers with images of poverty as an appeal to conscience. Graphics, prints, and posters too were often designed and distributed to encourage change or present the [...]
Comic Strips and the Popular Front
February 9, 2009 – 11:25 am
More thoughts about visualizing America in the 1930s. . . The history of the Great Depression and New Deal, and especially popular knowledge of the era, has been shaped by remnants of its popular visual media that continue to filter down to the present—from extravagant Busby Berkeley movie musicals and gripping social-drama movies, to [...]
The New Deal and Political Cartoons
January 26, 2009 – 2:02 pm
p>
In anticipation of our March online forum with Barbara Melosh on visualizing the Great Depression—and in light of our current economic situation—I thought I’d post some observations about how some of the New Deal’s policies were viewed by mainstream editorial cartoonists. If nothing else, the record of 1930s political cartooning offers a useful lesson [...]
