Assignment #2 – Visual Analysis of Two Photographs

(From: The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing)

Requirements:
A. MLA format will be used throughout. If you wish to use another
formatting style please discuss it with me first. For more specific
information refer to:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
B. Page set up (CM p.39-40):
1) Double spaced – no space between paragraphs.
2) 1” margins all sides
3) Times New Roman font recommended
4) Works cited page
5) In text citations
C. Essay includes pictures of both photographs with appropriate citation
B. 3-4 pages, minimum 3 full pages.

1. Choose two photographs from any section of “Beyond the Border”

(http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/aug/06/-sp-texas-border-
deadliest-state-undocumented-migrants). Your two visual texts should have enough in
common to facilitate meaningful comparisons. Identify these images in your essay MLA
in text citation), but also describe your two visual texts in detail to highlight what you
want viewers to see and to provide a foundation for your analysis. For this analysis,
choose several key points of contrast in design, analysis of the meaning behind the
photo and/or the photographer’s success in capturing the intended meaning as the
focus. Your thesis statement should make a claim about key differences in the way that
your chosen visual texts establish their purposes and achieve their persuasive effects.

Exploring and Generating Ideas for Your Analysis

In choosing your visual texts, look for some important commonality that will enable you
to concentrate on similarities and differences in your analysis:

2. CM pp.52-54, 63-66 cover a number of aspects a Visual Analysis.

Use the Strategies presented in the articles on SacCT to help you generate ideas, go
detail by detail through your images, asking how the rhetorical effect would be different
if some details were changed: Add more connections with ideas in the article.
Introduction • Hooks readers' interest;
• Gives background on the two visual texts you are analyzing;
• Sets up the similarities;
• Poses the question your paper will address;
• Ends with initial mapping in the form of a purpose or thesis
statement.
General description of Describes in appropriate detail each photo
2 visual texts
(documentary photos)
Analysis of the photos • Analyzes and contrasts each text in turn, using the ideas you
generated from your observations, question asking, and close
examination.
 Analyzes the angle of vision of the photographers, significance and
meaning of the 2 photographs.
 Analyzes how the photos work within the context of the articles.
 Analyzes aspects of design to further the meaning and significance of
the photos within the context and meaning of the article(s).
Conclusion • Returns to the big picture of meaning and signigicanse for a sense of closure
• Makes final comments about the significance of your analysis.

Student Example

LydiaWheeler (student)

Two Photographs Capture Women’s Economic Misery

During economic crises, the hardship of individuals is often presented to us as statistics and
facts: number of bankruptcies, percentage of the population living below the poverty line, and
foreclosures or unemployment rates. Although this numerical data can be shocking, it usually remains
abstract and impersonal. In contrast, photographers such as Stephen Crowley and Dorothea Lange help us
visualize the human suffering involved in the economic conditions, skillfully evoking the emotional, as well
as the physical, reality of their subjects. Crowley’s color photograph, first published January 2, 2010, in a
New York Times article titled “Living on Nothing but Food Stamps,” is captioned “Isabel Bermudez, who
has two daughters and no cash income.” Lange’s black and white photograph was commissioned by
the Resettlement Agency to document Americans living in the Great Depression; she originally captioned
it Destitute pea pickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936. However, in
March of the same year, the San Francisco Times published Lange’s photograph in an article demanding
aid for workers like Florence Owens Thompson, the central subject of the picture. Once published, the
photograph became famous and was nicknamed Migrant Mother. A close look at these two photos shows
that through their skillful use of photographic elements such as focus, framing, orientation, and shape,
Stephen Crowley and Dorothea Lange capture the unique emotional and physical realities of their
subjects, eliciting compassion and admiration, respectively.
Stephen Crowley’s photograph of a mother sitting in a room, perhaps the dining room of her
house, and her young daughter standing and reaching out to comfort her sets up contrasts and tensions
that underscore loss and convey grief. The accompanying article explains that Isabel Bermudez, whose
income from real estate once amply supported her family, now has no income or prospect for
employment and relies entirely on food stamps. A careful examination of Crowley’s photograph implies
this loss by hinting that Bermudez’s wealth is insecure. The framing, distance, and focus of Crowley’s
photograph emphasize this vanished wealth and the emotional pain. The image is a medium close up with
its human subjects to the side, surrounding them with empty space and hints of expensive furnishings.
While part of the foreground is sharply focused, the background is blurry and unfocused. There is a
suggestion that the room is spacious. Further, the high, decorative backs of the room’s chairs, the
repetitive design decorating the bookshelf on the frame’s left, and the houseplant next to the bookshelf
show that the room is well furnished, even luxurious. Bermudez and her daughter match their
surroundings in being elegantly dressed. Bermudez looks across the room as if absorbed in her troubles;
her daughter looks intently at her. Viewers’ eyes are drawn to Bermudez’s dark dress and her pearl
necklace and earrings. However, the ostensible comfort of Bermudez and her surroundings starkly
contrasts with her grief. Crowley heightens this contrast and tension through the subjects’ orientation and
the space between them. The space between Bermudez and her daughter is one of the photograph’s
dominant features, but it contains only out-of-focus objects in the background. Neither figure is
centered in the photo; neither looks at the camera. Consequently, the viewers’ attention moves back
and forth between them, creating a sense of uneasiness. The meaning of this photo is focused not on
what Bermudez has but on what she has lost.
Crowley also evokes sympathy and compassion for his subjects with his choice of angle, scale,
and detail. The photograph’s slightly high angle makes viewers look down—literally—on Bermudez,
making her appear vulnerable and powerless and reinforcing the pathos. The most striking bid for
compassion is the tears streaming down Bermudez’s well made-up face. The contrast between her tidy
appearance and the tear tracks on her face suggest overwhelming sadness. The poignancy of her
apparent breakdown is heightened by her somber daughter’s attempt to wipe away the tears on her
mother’s face. Crowley’s decisions regarding Isabel’s composition create an image that is highly
disturbing.
In contrast to Crowley’s photograph, Lange’s Migrant Mother—through its content, focus,
frame, rhythm, and angle—conveys long-standing poverty. Yetimage of inescapable poverty pressing
upon its subjects, it evokes admiration for this mother. Lange’s frame and focus generate much of the
intensity of Migrant Mother. This photo is also a medium close up, but Lange’s frame is tight with no open
space. The lack of this openness cramps Lange’s subjects and creates a claustrophobic feel intensified
by the number of subjects shown—four to Isabel’s two. There is almost no background. The subjects
filling the foreground are crowded and sharply focused. The contrast between crowded foreground
and empty background exaggerates the former and adds a touch of loneliness to Migrant Mother; this
mother has no resources besides herself. Additionally, the subjects of Migrant Mother almost
epitomize poverty: their hair is messy and uncombed, their skin dirt-stained. Even their clothes are
worn—from the hem of Thompson’s frayed sleeve to the smudges on her baby’s blanket, Lange’s
photograph shows that Thompson can barely afford functional items.
Migrant Mother’s circular lines also create a sense of sameness, stagnation, and hopelessness.
Thompson’s face draws viewers’ eyes as the dominant feature, and Lange has ringed it with several arcs.
The parentheses of her standing children’s bodies, the angle of her baby in its blanket, and the arc of her
dark hair form a ring that hems Thompson in and creates a circular path for the eyes of viewers. Seen with
the obvious destitution of Lange’s subjects, this repetition is threatening and grimly promises that it will
be difficult, if not impossible, for this family to escape its poverty.
Like Crowley’s Isabel, the impact of Lange’s Migrant Mother derives from both the tragedy of her
subjects’ situation and their reactions. Lange uses angle and scale to generate sympathy and admiration
for Thompson’s strength. Once again we see a slightly high angle highlighting the subjects’ vulnerability,
which Lange reinforces with the slender necks of Thompson’s children and a glimpse of her brassiere.
However, Lange then contrasts this vulnerability with Thompson’s strength, fostering viewers’ admiration
rather than compassion. Migrant Mother’s scale, for example, exaggerates rather than diminishes
Thompson’s size: the photograph’s frame focuses viewers’ attention on the mother, who looks large,
compared to her children. Additionally, Lange’s subject literally supports the bodies of the children
surrounding her. Unlike Bermudez, Thompson sits tall as a pillar of strength for her vulnerable children.
Even her expression—worried but dry eyed—fosters admiration and respect in viewers. By juxtaposing
Thompson’s vulnerability with her strength, Lange creates a photograph that conveys both its subjects’
poverty and their stoicism in facing the Great Depression.
Lange and Crowley guide viewer’s reactions to their photographs through careful control of the
elements that influence our emotional responses to their work. Though they both show women in
economic crises, these artists are able to convey the distinct realities of their subjects’ situations and
consequently send viewers away in different emotional states: one of compassion, one of admiration. The
fame and veneration of Lange’s Migrant Mother is a testament to her ability to evoke desired emotions.
The photograph was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941 and again in 1955, and was co-
opted by countless movements since it was first published. Whether Crowley’s Isabel will achieve
similar fame for epitomizing this generation’s economic crisis remains to be seen, but both photographs
certainly succeed in delivering strong, la