Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Picturing Migrants
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://history.cfac.byu.edu/index.php/James_R._Swensen * http://history.cfac.byu.edu/index.php/James_Swensen * http://www.denverpost.com/2015/12/03/book-review-picturing-migrants-by-james-r-swenson/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nr2002032546
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nr2002032546
HEADING: Swensen, James R.
000 01618cz a2200289n 450
001 5751803
005 20140814073831.0
008 020903n| azannaabn |n aaa c
010 __ |a nr2002032546
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca05862456
040 __ |a UPB |b eng |e rda |c UPB |d UPB
100 1_ |a Swensen, James R.
370 __ |a Salt Lake City (Utah) |e Tucson (Ariz.) |e Provo (Utah) |2 naf
372 __ |a Art–History |2 lcsh
372 __ |a Photography |2 lcsh
373 __ |a Brigham Young University |2 naf
373 __ |a University of Arizona |2 naf
373 __ |a University of Utah |2 naf
373 __ |a Salt Lake Community College |2 naf
374 __ |a Educators |2 lcsh
374 __ |a College teachers |2 lcsh
374 __ |a Museum curators |2 lcsh
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Utah historical quarterly, winter 2002: |b p. 39 (James R. Swensen, teacher at Salt Lake Community College)
670 __ |a Utah historical quarterly, winter 2011: |b page 81 (James R. Swensen; Brigham Young University)
670 __ |a James R. Swensen, website viewed August 12, 2014 |b (James R. Swensen; assistant professor of art history; BA, art history, Brigham Young University, 1998; MA, art history and curatorial studies, Brigham Young University, 2000; PhD, history of photography and art history, University of Arizona, 2009; taught at University of Arizona and University of Utah; research interests include art and photography of the American West; museum curator at Kimball Art Center, Park City, Utah, B.F. Larsen Gallery, Brigham Young Univesrity, University of Utah Museum of Fine Art, Salt Lake Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Brigham Young University, B.A., 1998, M.A., 2000; University of Arizona, Ph.D., 2009.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, professor; University of Arizona, Tucson, professor; Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, professor, 2007—. Worked previously as a curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kimball Art Center, Salt Lake Art Center, B.F. Larsen Gallery, University of Utah Museum of Fine Art, and Brigham Young University. Capitol Reef Project director, 2011. Exhibitions: “A Private Experience in a Public Space,” Snow College and Brigham Young University, 2011.
AWARDS:Faculty Research Award, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2010, for A Vision Official: A.J. Russell’s Photo-documentation of the Construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, 1868-1869.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
James R. Swensen has long been affiliated with Brigham Young University. It was there that he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree, as well as began his professional journey. The focus of Swensen’s academic work is art history. He has contributed specifically to art-related projects at BYU, having led and developed several exhibits. One of them, known formally as “A Private Experience in a Public Space,” showcased student art. This exhibit was part of a larger project centering around Utah’s Capitol Reef, displaying photographs of the area meant to highlight its beauty and wonder. Swensen’s work has garnered much acclaim, including a Faculty Research Award granted directly by Brigham Young University. He has also published writing.
Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography is similar to Swensen’s exhibition work in that it shines a spotlight on artwork in need of broader attention from the public. The book deals specifically with photography of migrant, impoverished farmers during the Great Depression, who were previously only depicted separately through works of fiction, such as John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, or through the various photographs that have become historical icons in American culture. In fact, Swensen makes the argument that Steinbeck’s famous work and these photographs, taken by the Farm Security Administration, are more deeply connected than we may have realized. Swensen asserts that Steinbeck’s depiction of the Joad family was directly influenced by careful research and his witnessing of photographs from the FSA. In turn, Swensen also seeks to illustrate the impact that these two sets of work have left upon American culture and our understanding of just how greatly the Great Depression affected our society and the lives of migrants.
Swensen also delves into the complicated history surrounding these two sets of art, and how they came to develop the impact they currently create. He traces the influence these two works left upon the American people in terms of showing them just how terribly migrant farmers of the era lived. Each of the photographs presented in the book fully displays the level of impoverishment migrants were forced to endure. Through his research, Swensen crafts a timeline between Grapes of Wrath and the photographs, the public’s perception of both of these sets of work, and governmental intervention to help the migrants, as well as the legacy left behind by these works today. A contributor to the Bookwatch remarked that the content of Picturing Migrants “makes for a key discussion and new perspective which should be required reading.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Bookwatch, February, 2016, review of Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography.
ONLINE
CFAC, http://history.cfac.byu.edu/ (August 2, 2017), author profile.
Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com/ (December 3, 2015), Sandra Dallas, “Book review: ‘Picturing Migrants,’ by James R. Swenson.”
Entrada Institute, http://www.entradainstitute.org/ (September 1, 2012), author profile.*
James R. Swensen
James R. Swensen is a graduate of BYU. He received his bachelor's degree in Art History in 1998 and his master's degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies in 2000. Swensen joined the Visual Arts faculty in 2007.
In the summer of 2010, Art History professor James Swensen was awarded the John Topham and Susan Redd Butler BYU Faculty Research Award from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. The mission of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is to promote the study of the Intermountain West by sponsoring research, publication, teaching, and public programs in a variety of academic disciplines. The award Swensen received is given to BYU faculty whose proposed research illuminates some aspect of the American experience in the Intermountain West.
The title of Swensen’s proposal was “A Vision Official: A.J. Russell’s Photo-documentation of the Construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, 1868-1869.” Swensen will be researching how A.J. Russell’s images (stereographs and larger formats) shaped the way the West was seen and sold to Eastern audiences. With this award Swensen will be able to conduct research in Iowa City at the Union Pacific RR Archives, in California, and along the route of the transcontinental railroad from Omaha to Promontory Point.
In 2011 Swensen was a director of the Capitol Reef Project funded by the Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration in the Arts. James also collaborated with Richard Hull and Jason Lanegan to incorporate all facets of the Visual Arts Department. The project included students from all disciplines of Visual Arts and concluded with an exhibit, A Private Experience in a Public Space, at BYU and also at Snow College.
Saturday Sunset Series Event
Saturday September 1, 2012 7:30 PM
Photo Exhibition, Labor Day Weekend
Robber’s Roost Bookstore, Torrey, Utah
James Swensen, an Assistant Professor of Art History at BYU will present a photo exhibit and media presentation focusing on “The History of Photographing Capitol Reef National Park”.
As with other areas of natural beauty, photography has played an important role in the representation of Capitol Reef National Park. From early photographers making Daguerreotypes to Ansel Adams and Minor White the area has lured many eager to explore its diversity and grandeur. This presentation, “Picturing Wonderland,” will explore this history and look at the way in which photography has shaped the ways we look at the place once called “Wayne’s Wonderland.”
Ansel Adams, Capitol Reef, 1947
Dr. James R. Swensen is an assistant professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. His research interests include the photography of great surveys of the Western United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the work of the New Deal’s Farm SecurityAdministration.
He has recently completed a book on Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams project Three Mormon Towns (to be published in 2012) and is in the process of completing a manuscript on the connections between John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and the photography. His presentation on the images of Capitol Reef is part of a larger, ongoing project that explores the photography of Utah and its national parks.
Picturing Migrants
The Bookwatch.
(Feb. 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Picturing Migrants
James R. Swensen
University of Oklahoma Press
2800 Venture Drive, Norman, OK 73069
www.oupress.com
9780806148274, $34.95, www.amazon.com
Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography links a classic novel with photos produced for the New Deal's
Farm Security Administration, offering a dual discussion of the novel and the photos which, together, provided a definitive exploration of migrant
experience in the 1930s. It's the intersection between the two which has proved pivotal and revealing: this provides new insights into both
Steinbeck's novel and the photos and how they both became definitive representations of the Depression. Chapters refute the notion that
Steinbeck's portrait of Oklahoma migrants in California stemmed from fantasy: Lee traveled to Oklahoma to prove they were real, and his
documentary pictures illustrate the many realities that Steinbeck so grippingly portrayed in Grapes of Wrath. Having Lee's works and these
images appear alongside the portraits of other photographers makes for a key discussion and new perspective which should be required reading
for any studying 1930s immigrant history, Steinbeck's novel, or documentary photos of the Depression.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Picturing Migrants." The Bookwatch, Feb. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444597504&it=r&asid=11d5f7382e6f5406648d8cad83ed4716. Accessed 9 July
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499644008233 2/2
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A444597504
ENTERTAINMENTBOOKS
Book review: “Picturing Migrants,” by James R. Swenson
Four families, three of them related with fifteen children, from the Dust Bowl in Texas gather in an overnight roadside camp near Calipatria, Calif.
Four families, three of them related with fifteen children, from the Dust Bowl in Texas gather in an overnight roadside camp near Calipatria, Calif.
By SANDRA DALLAS and SPECIAL TO THE DENVER POST | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: December 3, 2015 at 10:38 am | UPDATED: April 19, 2016 at 7:47 pm
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Not many people today actually remember the Great Depression. What most of us know about it comes from John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath” and from photographs taken under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration. “They have become the interlocking icons of the Great Depression,” writes James R. Swensen in “Picturing Migrants.”
Until now, Swensen claims, no one has done a major study on how the two were “stitched together.” “Picturing Migrants,” illustrated with dozens of FSA photographs, does just that.
There is no question that the pictures influenced Steinbeck. He worked with photographers. He visited the camps with them and studied their work. And in turn, publication of “The Grapes of Wrath” sent photographers scurrying to find Tom Joad and his family. Still, until the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, no copies of it included FSA photographs.
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FSA photographers — Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein among them — produced about 130,000 images before World War II would make the Depression a thing of the past. It’s possible that the most widely reproduced photograph ever taken was Lange’s picture of “Migrant Mother,” which showed a troubled Florence Thompson, her chin in her hand, and her two daughters looking off behind her.
The photographs moved a nation: Picutures of “dust bowlers” in broken-down jalopies piled high with bedding and pots and pans; of migrant children, barefoot and ragged, and of filthy camps were seared on the minds of Americans. Some of the worst were taken along Oklahoma City’s Mays Avenue. “Children, looking like savages, played in the dumps, wandered along the neighboring, muddy banks of the half-stagnant Canadian River … so foul were these human habitations and so vast their extent that some authorities reluctantly expressed the belief that Oklahoma City contained the largest and the worst congregation of migrant hovels between the Mississippi river and the Sierras,” a visitor wrote. One photograph shows boys too demoralized to shoo the flies off their faces. As bad as the squalor and filth were, even worse were the despair and hopelessness on the faces of Mays Avenue inhabitants.
Ansel Adams considered the photographers “socialists with cameras.” Many politicians and local government officials claimed the pictures were staged, that things couldn’t be that bad. But the pictures were hard to deny. So was Steinbeck’s novel, which stunned American readers with its documentary-like prose. Some dismissed it as communist propaganda. But it stayed on the best-seller lists for years. The movie, staring Henry Fonda, with its images so like those taken by FSA photographers, emphasized the migrant plight even more.
By the time the film was issued, in 1940, the government had taken steps to help the migrant farm workers, setting up sanitary camps, for instance. The FSA photographers documented all that, along with enclaves of prosperity. One was Pie Town, N.M., where many migrants settled, finding work and homes. The Pie Town photographs are some of the best known of the Dust Bowl images.
Could photographers today have the impact of those of the 1930s? Swensen doubts it. “It is unlikely that any image will emerge” like that of Migrant Mother, Swensen writes. Florence Thompson continued to live a migrant life long after her picture became famous. “If Dorothea Lange were to make a similar image today,” he adds, “her subject would be on the talk show circuit by the end of the week and have her own reality show by the end of the year.”