My image selection process was very methodical and precise. My skill assignments are dedicated to the memorabilia of the Latino culture and representation of the cultural groups through historic media. History, during the Great Depression does not demonstrate enough Latinos because a majority were sent back to their countries of origin. Therefore my assignments will represent the Latinos captured during these times in an effort to demonstrate how different groups dealt with the Great Depression.
My image is called “Child of a Migratory Farm Laborer” which shows a little Latino boy sitting on the ground of a cabbage field. While analyzing this image, a few questions I asked myself were, “Aside from immigration, how were Latinos managing survival as well as getting by through the Great Depression? Did they suffer equal or worse discrimination than Black people?”. More importantly “After a wave of deportation, how did that affect immigrations laws for Latinos specifically?”. The documentary evidence that could be gathered is that there are not enough laws or precautionary measures for children to be on the work place, or the existence of continuing child labor. This image was unique because the boy in the photograph was smiling. Most photographs from different collections showed little or no facial expression on both adults and children. However, smiling depicts a different environment that is not as terrorizing or “depressing” through the conditions of others.
While working on the glitched version of this photograph, I worked from the bottom up. I found these methods easy and rare with the ongoing thought that each movement was randomized. As stated by Michael Kramer, “glitching and deformance make it possible for us to brush history against the grain by, in a certain sense, changing the patterns of the grain itself. Digitally remediated, the source’s representational layers become more alive. Distortions to artifacts caused by these tactics ironically generate more accurate considerations of the traces of the past embedded in them.” 1 Distortions allow us to “rearrange” history and alter prespectives by changing an image into something entirely different. In doing so, it gives us less to think about by letting us see a glitched photograph for what it is and gets rid of a made up storyline by viewing an original photo. Trevor Owens stated “I think it suggests the value of understanding the integrity of digital objects not simply as ‘looking right’ in one particular reading out to the screen. In many cases, the integrity of the objects is something that can be expressed through a range of software enabled readings of it.” 2 Trevor is reminding us that something as simple as a photograph is more complex as it appears by the underlying code. This has helped me comprehend underlying codes as well as study how these methods can create different perspectives.
Bibliography
http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/159
http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/ana-talavera/child-of-a-migratory-farm-labo
- Kramer, Michael. “Glitching History – Current Research in Digital History.” Homepage – Current Research in Digital History. Accessed October, 2019. http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-08-glitching-history/.
- Owens, Trevor. “Glitching Files for Understanding: Avoiding Screen Essentialism in Three Easy Steps.” Library of Congress Blogs. Last modified November 5, 2012. https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/11/glitching-files-for-understanding-avoiding-screen-essentialism-in-three-easy-steps/.
