A Century of American Urban Photography: ‘We Believed in Hope’

Arthur Leipzig, Divers, East River

The exhibition ‘Portrait of a City’ considers one hundred years of American urban life as seen through the photographer’s lens. (The Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 October)

‘I get totally out of myself. It’s the closest I get to not existing.’
Garry Winogrand

We visit New York and Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as they expand at an unprecedented pace. We see immigration, industrialisation; staggering wealth and pitiful poverty, cheek by jowl. 

‘I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession.’
Alfred Stieglitz

From an upper deck on a transatlantic crossing, Alfred Stieglitz photographs the steerage passengers below, huddled under their woollen shawls. High up on the Empire State Building, Lewis Hine shoots a construction worker confidently clinging to the hoisting ball of a crane.

We observe the effects of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression - unemployment, homelessness, relentless hardship. We stop by a boarded-up Harlem tenement (‘Danger. Keep out’), and the Best Hotel in The Bowery (‘Beds 20c’). There’s a live burlesque show at the Chicago Theater. And a man in a tatty suit sleeps on the pavement, arms folded, his fedora still perched on his head. 

‘Sometimes I come away… sick at heart, with the faces of people in pain etched as sharply in my mind as on my negatives. But I go back because I think it is my place to take such pictures.’
Margaret Bourke-White

In San Francisco Dorothea Lange shows us a defeated man on a breadline, his back turned away. In harsh, high contrast black-and-white, Weegee presents New York’s underbelly, the brutal violence, the voyeuristic crowds.

‘Many photographers live in a dream world of beautiful backgrounds. It wouldn’t hurt them to get a taste of reality to wake them up. Anyone who looks for life can find it.’
Weegee

Lewis Hine, Riding the Ball High Up on Empire State

And all the while people work and play, fall in and out of love, raise families. Boys dive from a wall into the East River. A girl sits in the back of a limousine with the window down. A lady in a cloche hat and furs pauses on 42nd Street. And Roy DeCarava finds two men in an almost empty ballroom, dancing in the dark.

We witness post-war prosperity, corporate expansion. Whatever the drama enacted on the streets, there’s always an attempt to make a sale.

‘Here is the place to get live bait.’
’Walkers Gin. Made with imported botanicals.’ 
’Rheingold Extra Dry.’ 
‘Brown’s Mule. Juicy and Sweet. 5c cuts.’
‘Purol-Pep Gasolene. Wakes up your motor.’

Saul Leiter shoots in impressionistic colour - through windows and doorways, capturing reflections on wet panes of glass. With an unflinching gaze, Diane Arbus seeks out the marginalised and maverick.

‘Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different… That is what I love: the differentness.’
Diane Arbus

Then there’s Cold War paranoia, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam; protest and generational division; the counterculture. Garry Winogrand shoots at pace, capturing the city’s kinetic energy. On Hollywood Boulevard three female office workers walk past a man in a wheelchair. On Park Avenue a couple with a monkey sit in an open topped car.

'Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty… I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life.'
Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand - Park Avenue, New York 1959

Soon highways cut through neighbourhoods and suburbs expand outwards. We watch the creeping anonymity, the loneliness and alienation. Ed Ruscha reveals the banal aspects of West Coast life: the horizontal city; gas stations, apartment buildings, parking lots and palm trees.

‘After people live a while in a place to which they’ve laid waste, it gets to be easy to hate a great many things, including themselves.’
Robert Adams

Finally, Bruce Davidson takes us down onto the New York subway. Cautiously we peer at the graffiti, the trash, the neglect. Passengers regard us with curiosity, defiance, indifference.

‘And to find its humanity when it’s inhuman, that’s a challenge.’
Bruce Davidson

The exhibition reminds us that we don’t have to go far for inspiration. It’s on our doorsteps.

‘I would rather photograph in Grand Central Station than in the Grand Canyon… that’s my choice.’ 
Bruce Davidson

I left thinking that, despite the grim realities - the people that fell through the cracks - the American city in the twentieth century was a thrilling, tumultuous, romantic place; a vortex of possibilities; an ever-changing stage for communities to come together, for businesses to thrive, for individuals to pursue their dreams. Because they believed in hope.

‘Of course, the ‘good old days’ were not all sweetness and light. There was poverty, racism, corruption and violence in those days too, but somehow we believed in the possible. We believed in hope.’
Arthur Leipzig

Walker Evans, 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, 1929

'Rockets, moon shots,
Spend it on the have nots.
Money, we make it,
'Fore we see it, you take it.
Oh, make me want to holler
The way they do my life.
Make me want to holler,
The way they do my life.
This ain't livin', this ain't livin’.
No, no baby, this ain't livin’

Hang-ups, let downs,
Bad breaks, set backs.
Natural fact is,
Oh honey that I can't pay my taxes.
Oh, make me want to holler,
And throw up both my hands.
Yea, it make me want to holler,
And throw up both my hands.
Oh crime is increasing,
Trigger happy policing.
Panic is spreading,
God knows where we're heading.
Oh, make me want to holler,
They don't understand.'
Marvin Gaye, 'Inner City Blues’ (J Nyx / M Gaye)

No. 587

Garbo’s Hat: Recognising People’s Right to Be Wrong

Greta Garbo was a Hollywood star of the silent era, adored for her luminous on-screen presence, her sophisticated beauty, her worldly-wise personality. With the advent of ‘talkies’ MGM became nervous. What would audiences make of her heavy Swedish accent? They delayed as long as they could. Then in 1930 Garbo played the eponymous heroine of ‘Anna Christie’. She walked into a bar, collapsed into a chair and demanded:

'Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby.’

The studio publicised the movie with posters proclaiming: ‘Garbo talks!’ The public were delighted, and ‘Anna Christie’ was the highest grossing film of the year.

Garbo subsequently performed in a succession of classics, including ‘Grand Hotel’, ‘Queen Christina’, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Camille’. She consistently played melancholic and melodramatic heroines. She was compellingly serious, earnest, pensive. But gradually her popularity began to wane, and in 1939 the studio decided to change tack, casting her in an Ernst Lubitsch comedy, ‘Ninotchka’.

Buljanoff: 'How are things in Moscow?'
Ninotchka: 'Very Good. The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.' 

Garbo plays Ninotchka, a Soviet special envoy sent to Paris to organise a sale of royal Russian jewellery. She is sober, stern, judgemental; unimpressed by bourgeois capitalism.

Ninotchka: 'Why should you carry other people's bags?'
Porter: 'Well, that's my business, Madame.'
Ninotchka: 'That's no business. That's social injustice.'
Porter: 'That depends on the tip.'

Wherever Ninotchka goes in Paris, she is taken aback by its indulgent Western ways. All about her seems shallow and superfluous, petty and pointless. She spots a couture hat in a shop window. It looks rather like a lampshade.

Ninotchka: 'What's that?'
Comrade Kopalski: 'It's a hat, Comrade. A woman's hat.'
Ninotchka: 'How can such a civilization survive which permits their women to put things like that on their heads. It won't be long now, Comrades.'

 Ninotchka also encounters the debonair Frenchman, Count Leon (played by Melvyn Douglas). She recognizes that he is rather charismatic, but dismisses him as entirely frivolous.

 'Now, don't misunderstand me. I do not hold your frivolity against you. As basic material, you may not be bad; but you are the unfortunate product of a doomed culture. I feel very sorry for you.'

Gradually, however, Ninotchka is seduced by the charms of Paris and the Count. And soon she cannot resist the hat she recently found so contemptible.

‘Ninotchka’ is a magnificent comedy, bristling with elegant witticisms and sharp social satire. It reminded me that, growing up in the midst of the Cold War, we were often prompted to consider the differences between Soviet and Capitalist societies. 

To teenagers like me Communism certainly had its appeal: the avowed commitment to equality, the intolerance of plutocrats, the celebration of the workers, the military caps with retractable ear-flaps. But we were also, of course, aware of the suppression of individual freedoms, of Stalin’s dark secrets. And there was a nagging sense that Communism was somehow dull, dreary and joyless; that it didn’t accommodate human foibles and foolishness - the insignificance of pop, the frippery of fashion, the triviality of brands and advertising. In short Communism didn’t seem to afford people the right to be wrong. And this seemed somehow very important to me.

If you work in the field of marketing or advertising and were fortunate enough to grow up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s still perhaps worth reflecting on the differences between Capitalism and Communism. You may conclude like me that ordinary people are capricious, fickle and flighty. They oscillate between profound passions and shallow affections; between ardent commitments and superficial attachments. They can be both serious and silly; consistent and erratic. They can comfortably hold two mutually opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. And that’s what makes us human.

In the critical scene of ‘Ninotchka’ our heroine sits down in a restaurant and orders raw beets and carrots. The owner is unimpressed:

'Madame, this is a restaurant, not a meadow.'

Count Leon does everything he can to entertain her over lunch - all to no avail. Finally he resorts to a joke.

 'A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table. He says, "Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream." Five minutes later the waiter comes back and says, "I'm sorry sir, we have no cream, can it be without milk?"'

Ninotchka is still not amused, but when the Count accidentally tumbles from his chair, she breaks into cascades of joyous laughter. Ninotchka’s defences have been breached by a ludicrous pratfall. And Garbo shows a hitherto concealed gift for comedy.

This time round the promotional posters were headlined: ‘Garbo laughs!’

'By the look in your eye I can tell you're gonna cry. 
Is it over me?
If it is, save your tears for I'm not worth it, you see.
For I'm the kind of guy who is always on the roam,
Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home.’

Marvin Gaye, Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) (Barrett Strong/ Marvin Gaye/ Norman Whitfield)

No. 207

Stick Or Twist? Learning When To Change

‘Oh, I’ve got news for you, Baby,
That I’ve made plans for two.
I guess I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow.
Got my mind made up to love you.’

Stubborn Kind of Fellow/ Marvin Gaye (Stevenson/Gaye/Gordy)

I recently saw an excellent production of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which runs at The National Theatre in London until 18 May). Through a ten-play cycle Wilson, who passed away in 2005, sought to document the African American experience. He wrote one play for each decade of the twentieth century. It’s a titanic achievement and surely one day a major British theatre company will stage all ten.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927.  It considers the lives of a group of black musicians for whom slavery is a recent memory and discrimination is a current reality. Ma Rainey, the ‘Mother of the Blues,’ is booked into a studio to record, amongst other material, her signature tune, Black Bottom. Rainey is tough, imperious, defiant. Through years of bitter experience she has learned to stand up to the threats and enticements of corporate white America. Her manager and producer are eager for her to evolve her blues sound to accommodate the growing public enthusiasm for jazz rhythms. And they have an ally in the ambitious young dandy of a trumpet player, Levee, who has written a more jazz-inflected arrangement of Rainey’s tune.

Our sympathies are naturally with Rainey. We applaud her dogged determination, her inflexible insistence on doing her song her way. We want her to win.

Maybe we always side with the stubborn ones. We admire the independent voice, the tenacious spirit. Our cultural history is crammed with heroic tales of single-minded artists taking on the reactionary establishment, the carping critics, the fickle public.

So we applaud Ginger Rogers when she insists on wearing her ostrich feather dress for Cheek to Cheek, despite the protestations of Fred Astaire, who found the wayward plumes distracting.

We delight in the rigidity of Samuel Beckett’s stage directions, which preclude any new director’s interpretations of his work. 

We cheer when we hear how Shostakovitch responded to critics’ comments as he was finalising his Leningrad Symphony:

‘I take them under consideration, but not into practice.’

But are we right to side with Rainey? Perhaps her producer and manager are just thinking about money. But Levee clearly has artistic, as well as selfish motives, to adapt her piece. And why not sympathise with the audience’s appetite for change, freshness and innovation?

Is the accommodation of public opinion and preference inherently wrong? Shouldn’t any creative endeavour evolve and transform in tune with times and tastes?

I suspect that, whilst we celebrate romantic yarns of artistic integrity and defiance in the face of feedback, most of us in the commercial sector are engaged in more nuanced, calibrated calculations. Indeed the navigation of different dynamics and tensions is at the heart of commercial creativity. We’re not pursuing ‘art for art’s sake.’ We have attitudinal, behavioural and financial goals. For us creativity is not an end in itself. It is a strategy for achieving effectiveness.

In my experience the best Creative Directors and Strategists know when to be stubborn with an idea; when to stay with it, despite dissenting opinion and challenging research. But they can also judge when to back off; when cumulative evidence or circumstances prevent progress. Sometimes they evolve and adapt a concept to accommodate the external point of view. And sometimes they can switch effortlessly from single-minded passion to starting all over again.

Fundamentally we need to learn when to stick and when to twist.  It’s not a science. It’s a skill.

‘You notice how in winter-floods the trees which bend before the storm preserve their twigs. The ones which stand against it are destroyed, root and branch.’

 Haemon to his father Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone

In many ways Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a joyous, funny, inspiring play. But there’s also a note of sadness hanging over proceedings, as the whole cast variously reflect on their experiences of prejudice, failure and loss.  As the wise pianist, Toledo, says of his own disappointments:

‘Gonna be foolish again. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice.’

Marvin Gaye 'Stubborn Kind Of Fellow'

No. 72