Prints
-
“Judgement” by John MacWhirter, signed print from an engraving, ca. 1935–43, for the Works Progress Administration. Via the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL Digital Collections, image 5179597. Click image to enlarge. ↩︎
-
Biblical quotation from Micah 3. ↩︎
-
Biblical quotation from Isaiah 10. ↩︎
-
The Library of Congress has photos produced by the Farm Security Administration of flood refugees in 1937. Many of them are African American. ↩︎
'Judgement' by John MacWhirter for the WPA, ca. 1935–43
In the powerful image above,1 a biblical passage on the pulpit reads:
They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field2 … Woe unto them who decree unrighteous decrees … who turn aside the needy from justice, and rob the poor of my people of their rights.3
Below are church pews full of worshipers. Straight ahead are two church windows and above them a cross in front of a bigger window that is cracking. The walls of the church and a beam are coming down, helped along by falling bombs. Surrounding the cross that the bombs are falling toward are four quadrants that show challenges and injustices of the late 1930s and early 1940s. (If they match up with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I am unsure how.)
Clockwise from top-left: There is a factory producing something; out front stands a boy whose emaciated ribs and distended stomach are painfully visible. Next, there are buildings almost completely submerged by flood waters; flooded telephone poles are leaning precariously.4 After that is a Black man hanging by his neck from a tree; the seated onlookers are wearing civilian clothes, not Klan robes. Finally, there are sharecroppers bent over, working a field, presumably for less than their bare subsistence requires.
An Example of White Terror Depicted in WPA Art
“South” by Philip Reisman. “Executed for the Public Art Works Project, 1934."*
The South here is portrayed as a place of white terror: lynching, cross burning, Ku Klux Klan. Note, too, the figures on the left: men in chains working at gun point, modern-day slave labor powering industry. The prisoner whose face is visible is Black, the armed guard white. (Click to enlarge for detail.)
I’ve always avoided posting such images, but the history whitewashing of the current administration is making me think differently. This art, at least, is respectful. It depicts the humanity of the victims, unlike the grizzly souvenir postcards circulated by the terrorists.
* Source: NYPL Digital Collections, image 5179787.
Election Night Illumination, Flatiron Building, New York City, color postcard, N.Y. Sunday American & Journal (W. R. Hearst, 1904), Library of Congress.
Broadcasting Election Results and Taking Opinion Polls in 1872
The illustrated British weekly The Graphic published these two fascinating images of U.S. election technologies in 1872. Explanations from the publication follow.
“The Electoral Magic Lantern” aka Broadcasting Results (top)
“Mammoth stereopticon”, at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-Second Street. “By means of a stereoscopic apparatus and magic lantern, the telegrams [of election results] are rapidly copied on a glass plate, and then put in the apparatus. Large crowds assemble till early in the morning, to watch the returns, which are shown on the wall of some building, covered with a large white sheet."–from source periodical.
“Taking Votes in a Railway Car” aka Polling Voter Intentions (bottom)
“It is a common thing to take votes in the railway carriages during election campaigns, though strictly speaking, it is not so much taking a vote as ascertaining approximately which candidate will have the best chance. Each passenger enters the name of his choice on a piece of paper, and a gentleman, generally a politician, takes his hat and collects the votes. Bets are offered and taken, and after the scrutiny animated discussions arise, each man endeavouring to persuade his opponents."–from source periodical.
Source: Wood engravings by Paul Frenzeny (artist) and Francis Sylvester Walker (delineator), The Graphic, November 30, 1872, via The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (Higher resolutions available.)
Russian Anti-Austrian War Propaganda, 1914–15
“An Austrian went to Radziwill and came right on to a peasant woman’s pitchfork,” Russian print by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, 1914–15, New York Public Library Digital Collections. The library has digitized five more prints in this series.