I selected Francisco P. Lord
1because I noticed quickly he was an artist of color. I knew that our project would include glitching and I’ve always been very curious as to how artists of color have been systemically silenced. I was drawn to him also because the sculpture he’s working on is called “seated figure” but looks feminine. I was drawn to his ability to work on sculptures of women in the time and be able to see them as art, and create them so realistically nonetheless. I think it reveals that despite the 1930s preaching to be so embedded in gender roles, there were people who were succeeding in more progressive ways. That there were people like Francisco P. Lord who wanted to create art for the sake of beauty and not for social gain. I also like that the photographer, though employed by the Federal Art Project, wasn’t scorned by the racism taking place that he still took an equal amount of pictures of Lord 2. The caption reveals that he was selected to be shown at the World’s Fair. I felt like that was important to our earlier discussion on race.
3The historical question I am asking is: How did photographs of artists of color alter the racist narrative beginning to take foothold in the 1930s?
These methods, like glitching and annotating images, help us to think more critically because they encourage us to understand them beyond just a photograph. They make us think why the photograph was taken, how the other person was affected, and what happens when we try to glitch it to expose the true sentiment behind it. I like glitching more than image annotation because I feel like glitching is a very active way to analyze the images. It allows us to really delve into their creation, and how the image changes meaning when it is altered. I especially feel that it reveals undertones that the original image cannot show that we can only interpret with previous historical insight. Glitching
4made me draw conclusions about the image rather than see it for it’s objective parts. But, I feel like the annotation had to be the first step before understanding the glitching because I couldn’t have interpreted an image that I didn’t know anything about. I needed to understand it’s parts before I could draw assumptions about the whole. It helped me answer my historical question because I realized that photographers were open enough to take pictures of people of color and recognized their talent. So, as more photographs were taken of people of color, successful artists could be respected for what they were, successful artists. The question I still have going forward is how much those pictures were seen by everyone else? Because they can’t alter their narrative unless white people see them. Once I uncover that, I can truly understand more about my historical question.
- http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/admin/items/show/186
- “Working Together.” Edited by Department of Geography, Living New Deal, University of California Berkely’s Department of Geography, 2019, livingnewdeal.org/working-together/.
- “XII. Equal Rights and the New Deal.” Edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, THE AMERICAN YAWP, Stanford Press, 7 June 2013, www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/.
- http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/natalie-cumming-fransisco-p–l
