Eyes on Labor News Photography and America's Working Class

by Quirke, Carol

• ISBN13: 9780199768233
• ISBN10: 0199768234
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-08-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Eyes on Labornarrates an essential chapter in American cultural history, offering a fascinating broad-stroke history of the relationship of photography to the complex and troubled history of twentieth-century labor and unionization movements. It examines a subject that is critical to understanding the Great Depression, the New Deal, and beyond-organized labor-in the form of its representation in a realm that has received little attention-news photography. The book provides simultaneously, a detailed history of the representation (and self-representation) of labor within labor movements (something rarely addressed, given the usual focus on iconic photographs and images of heroic, idealized workers), and of the labor movement more generally, with the process of representation highlighted as its principal narratives. It focuses on "instrumentalist" labor photojournalism, and, in particular, the visualization of militance, addressing the antithesis of the focus of the (oft-studied) Farm Security Administration. Quirke chronicles how labor activism was documented and also how that documentation--mediated by certain publications--legitimated, expanded, and also limited organized labor's role in mid-century U.S. politics and society. Her weaving of contexts and specifics, different moments of the past and their echoes today, is sure-footed. In short, she shows that photography was essential to a larger battle of national attitudes toward labor movements and the broader unionization movement in the US during the first half of the 20th century

Author Biography

Carol Quirke is an Associate Professor of American Studies at SUNY Old Westbury. She has published essays and reviews in the American Quarterly, Reviews in American History, and New Labor Forum. She is a former community organizer, who worked on economic justice, immigrant rights, and public housing issues before receiving her Ph.D. in U.S. History. She has a close connection to the events described in Eyes on Labor-her grandfather was working in the Republic Steel mill when police shot strikers on Chicago's Southeast Side; her great-uncle was one of the 100 plus men, women and children who were shot by police in what is called the Memorial Day Massacre.