I found the image I chose to use from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War collection. It is easy to tell how this image applies to the Office of War as it is an image of a man standing behind a large supply of military weapons and ammunition. This photo was taken in 1942, the year after the U.S. entered World War 2. The end of 1930s saw the beginning of the second World War. Despite the tragic events of WW2, the war did assist in bringing the U.S. out of the negative impacts of the Great Depression. More and more factories were opened and booming due to high demand in supplies for the war, creating many new jobs. As men went away to fight in the war, many women were left to take on jobs they left behind. 1 The benefits of World War 2 that the U.S. experienced makes me wonder: how did Americans of this time view the war and if did they support the war efforts?
Image analysis and the glitching process both offer different ways to look at and understand an image you may not otherwise. Simply by doing an image analysis on the original image allowed me to think more critically about what was happening in the image, the context and reasoning behind said image. The glitching process not only created an entirely new feel to the image, but allowed me to view details about the image I missed before. In Michael J. Kramer’s example of glitching, it places an African American man in the forefront of the image instead of the two other white men revealing a new narrative for folk music. 2 In the image I selected, there is a man standing behind a large amount of ammunition that can’t all be shown just from one picture, but after the glitch the amount of arsenal that is depicted seems endless. This allows us to think about just how much arsenal the U.S. needed and used during the war and just how much destruction, due to the fighting, and economic growth, due to an increase of jobs there was.
Exhibit Link: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/thunderfortheartillery/artilleryin1942
Omeka Item Link: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/165
- Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
- Kramer, Michael J. “Glitching History: Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival.” Current Research in Digital History, January 1, 1970. http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-08-glitching-history/.
