This Was the Modern World

We might take pictures, but Ben Shahn makes pictures.

The selection of Shahn's pictures now at the Sackler Museum shows, again and again, how very well he does so. A Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, Shahn came to the United States in 1906. His leftist politics and interest in social reform are reflected in these paintings and photographs of New York during the Great Depression. He employs a social-realist vision and style, advocating reform by showing the frustrations of ordinary people and addressing unemployment, poverty, immigration, class and race.

The exhibit places a particular emphasis on the relationship between Shahn's paintings and his photographs, as these two components of Shahn's art are placed side by side in the gallery. It is most interesting to see how Shahn interprets his photography through his paintings. In the paintings, many of which resemble the photographs directly and are accordingly placed next to the corresponding photographs in the exhibit, Shahn expresses a unique perception on his photography through his own color, abstraction and perspective.

Though Shahn's paintings give insight into Shahn's interpretations of his photography, his photography certainly speaks for itself. The way Shahn is able to convey a certain mood by a photo of nothing more than a store display window is nothing short of genius. One piece, showing his daughter looking into an empty shop window, captures at the same time the desolation of the shop and the innocence of the little girl. Shahn makes the viewer painfully aware of the economic hardships endured during the Depression, that this store is not unique in its emptiness and desolation.

Shahn's photographs are more than simply pictures of ordinary people--they are reflections of an individual's mood, a child's innocence, a worker's despair. Shahn has the gift of capturing moments of vulnerability, when a person's thoughts and feelings are revealed in his or her eyes, body language or movement. Looking around the exhibit, the intensity is overwhelming, because Shahn's works are full of these instances of real emotion and deep revelation.

"Untitled (6th Avenue, New York City)," circa 1932-1935, seems, at first glance, to be a simple snapshot of a crowd of men in midtown Manhattan. The faces and figures of some are blurred, evidence of the close proximity in which Shahn uses his camera. Yet, we see that Shahn's photography employs method in its apparent randomness--there is one man that draws our attention. This man is in the center of the photograph and in focus, and we see that he seems to be deep in thought, with a slight frown on his face.

There is something haunting about this man. Even as the busy world passes him by, he is frozen in time by Shahn's camera. What is he thinking? What has he been through? How is he different from the hundreds of other men wearing hats and walking quickly past? Who is this man?

Shahn somehow takes us even beyond this point of questioning, and hints that this man is, perhaps, in despair, that this man is lost. This man's face, as captured by Shahn, exposes solitude, the knowledge of the possibility of dreams and the understanding of dreams broken. Shahn's ability to capture these moments of emotional revelation is what makes his works gripping, enrapturing and haunting.

Even as Shahn portrays the despair and melancholy of the Depression, he also captures the hope and strength of the people, especially through his photographs of children. In "Greenwich Village (New York City)," circa 1932-35, Shahn portrays at the same time the time's despair and youth's hope. Here he captures four boys gathered on the sidewalk, looking at each other like lost children. The boy in the center concentrates on the crumpled newspaper he holds in his hands. There is a sadness that comes with the attention that he devotes to this seemingly old and worthless newspaper, which he regards as a treasure. And there is nothing to suggest that this is anything out of the ordinarythis is what the boys know of life.

Yet there is hope in the unbrokenness of youth, freshness in the ability to dream. The boy in the center does not seem to notice the despair around him; he is focused and content with his newspaper. He does not let the fact that it is crumpled and torn detract from the content which it holds. Shahn captures the life and hope of children as they embrace the world with a boldness free of despair. Shahn documents this capturing of life, at its fullest even when circumstances are at their worst. And this documentation of history takes us beyond facts to the heart of humanity during the Depression.

In his photography, Shahn captures something about everyday life that makes it more than a picture, but a document of personal and historical despair and triumph. Shahn gives us a taste of what life in New York was like during the Depression for ordinary people. He has an amazing way of capturing the hurt and the despair--as well as the hope and the innocence--in the hearts of the people. Walking through the show, you feel almost as if you were walking with the people in the photographs, feeling their emotions, seeing their hurt first-hand--and somehow knowing that it can never be understood completely.

Taking a picture is the ability to transfer the physical reality onto film. Making a picture is imbuing that photograph with meaning and purpose. Making a picture is creating the individual in the photograph, so that the viewer is led to question, understand and empathize. Shahn's making of New York City during the Great Depression is a historical documentation of not only the physical realities, but also the realities of the soul of humanity. His works highlight the ordinary in a time of extraordinary loss, despair and, dare we say, hope.