When I began searching for an image, I was intent on finding something that showed the harshness of the Great Depression on people much like the famous Migrant Mother photograph from the 1930’s. The image I chose had the opposite kind of intent as that photo. The photograph I chose showed how some of these art programs helped people escape the harshness of the Great Depression and give some relief to those in need. This image specifically caught my eye because it was a young child and the effect of the Great Depression on the children specifically is not something I would normally think about, I would normally think about the effect on adults or families as a whole.
With this image, I’m asking questions like “How did the children of the Great Depression deal with the stress of the times?”. I think that this image in particular shines a light on the positives of the arts programs and how they impacted people’s attitudes. The monetary impacts of the Great Depression sent people into a state of panic or great sadness and these kind of programs had a significant impact on mood and morale especially for the youth. 1
I’ll admit that I don’t see the purpose of the glitched images as much as the next person but this process definitely helped me see the potential in it. The article by Kramer helped me see some of the potential applications for glitching an image but it wasn’t until glitching my own image that it started to click. The article even states glitching as ‘an unlikely candidate for historical inquiry’. 2 At first my glitched image made no sense to me and didn’t help me see the image in a different way at all until about the third time when it blacked out and distorted most of the image except for the child’s face. The face is what drew me to the image and the glitched image puts a larger emphasis on the intensity of that face.
These methods force us to look at these images in different ways that we wouldn’t have originally. Putting emphasis on certain aspects or blocking out the background can shine a light on a whole new meaning of an image. The glitching in particular helps with the blocking out of the less important parts of images and focuses the viewers attention to certain aspects and parts of an image.
I don’t think these methods helped me answer any questions as much as they sparked my interest for a new topic or raised different questions. This image in particular forced me to think about the effect of the Great Depression on the children adn how they coped rather than focusing on the adults.
Links: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/196
http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/arthur-smith–a-young-boy-name/image-annotation
- Chapters, All, and All Chapters. THE AMERICAN YAWP, 7 June 2013, http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/.
- Kramer, and Michael J. “Glitching History: Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival.” Current Research in Digital History, 1 Jan. 1970, http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-08-glitching-history/.
