Seminar 5 - Post War Years

Joe Rosenthal took an image in 1945 called ‘Marines Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’
This image was the inspiration for a sculpture. It shows determination and struggle, and the American flag shows independence. However the image was set up as Rosenthal asked them to take the flag down and do it again. The photo is faked. It is not spontaneous, it is constructed. It did show a moment in time but not exactly when it first happened.

Walter Hahn took a photograph of Dresden being hit by air forces in 1945. The angel with it’s hand outstretched has a religious connotation. Germany lost the war and were having to start over. This was the end of modernity; a vision towards eutopia and trying to get to it together. However eutopia had become dystopia.

Henri Cartier Bresson shows through an image that we are all responsible for our own behaviours. The world is a Godless place and we are individuals. There was a rejection of religious dogma.

Robert Frank from The Americans shows America how it was and not how it wanted to appear. It was focusing on looking at the underbelly of America. He went around and photographed America as he found it, not how other photographers had made it look. There was a clear division in his image between the wealthy and the poor in society.

Street photography had become popular around this time and there was an emergence of individualism. Branding was common, tying people into a particular way of being their lifestyle.

David Bailey took photographs of celebrities. Mick Jagger 1964
For the first time people were becoming wealthy for their talents. Britain became more of a meritocracy (effort = success).

This was also the start of women’s liberation. There was more of a promiscuous society – the pill was created in 1960’s.