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Exhibition Review
"Picturing Faith: Religious America in Government Photography,
1935–1943."
Traveling exhibition.
Feb. 1999, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; March 1–April
30, 1999, State University of New York, College at Fredonia, Fredonia,
N.Y.; May 15–Aug. 15, 1999, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur,
Ga.; Sept. 1, 1999–Jan. 1, 2000, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College,
Wheaton, Ill.; Jan. 15–Feb. 15, 2000, Rowan College, Glassboro, N.J.;
March 6–Aug. 15, 2000, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, Ind.; Aug.
15–Oct. 1, 2000, Huntington College, Huntington, Ind.; Oct. 15–Dec.
15, 2000, Drew University, Madison, N.J.; Jan. 1–March 31, 2001,
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Ia.; May 1–Aug. 15, 2001,
Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, Netherlands; Oct. 1–Dec. 1, 2001,
Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.; Dec. 1, 2001–Feb.
1, 2002, Newman University, Wichita, Kans.; Feb. 1–April 1, 2002,
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colo.; April 1–June 1,
2002, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.; June 1–Aug. 1,
2002, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Aug. 1–Oct. 1, 2002,
Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, Va.; Oct. 1–Dec. 1, 2002, Vassar
College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Dec. 1, 2002–Feb. 1, 2003, University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark. 45 photographs. Colleen McDannell, curator;
Gary Wickard, assistant designer.
Internet: list of photographs
in the exhibition, images of 17 of them, prospectus, information on the
curator <http://www.materialreligion.org/exhibit/index.html>
(Sept. 18, 2001).
| "Picturing Faith,"
which might best be described as a photo essay, functions at two
major levels: it documents a broad range of depression-era religion
in the United States, and it interprets a massive government photograph
collection. With support from the Lilly Endowment under the Material
History of American Religion Project, Colleen McDannell, Sterling
M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies and professor of history
at the University of Utah, has selected and organized the photographs
in the exhibition from the collection of negatives created by the
New Deal–era Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office
of War Information. Beginning in 1935, Roy Stryker, director of
the Historical Division of the FSA, hired some of the best professional
photographic artists in the country to travel and document economic
conditions. Stryker's vision was broader, however, and the ensuing
collection of negatives, numbering several hundred thousand, includes
a significant number of photographs of religion and religious practice. |
1 |
| McDannell
has organized the photographs and accompanying texts into four thematic
groups that are designed to be viewed and read sequentially. The
first group, "Religion and Photography," contains images that illustrate
how the photographers represented various modes of religious experience.
Beginning with the famous Dorothea Lange photograph Migrant Mother
(1936), the group juxtaposes intimate images of solitary religious
reflection in a home, spiritual ecstasy in a dirt-floored garage,
and a group Bible study. |
2 |
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