two lesson plans, each considering the impact of the visual media on our understanding of politics

Grade Levels
8-12
Subject Areas
Art Connections; Visual Art; Language Arts, Civics, U.S. History, Historical Understanding

BACKGROUND
Ben Shahn was an artist who was engaged with the social and political events of his time. He was a painter, a muralist, a commercial artist, and a photographer. During the 1930s he was hired to take photographs for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal agency that worked to help rural communities affected by the Great Depression. Roy Stryker, an economist with a belief in the power of photographs on public policy, started the project. The FSA photographers included Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks among others. Their images came to define our memories of the 1930s, as well as to firmly establish the documentary style of photography in America. Lesson 2 explores this period in history, and how the FSA photographs have shaped our collective memory of the era.

Lesson 1 uses Shahn’s working methods to provide a creative way of exploring how images affect our emotional reactions to current events. In addition to his own photographs, Shahn kept neatly organized picture files of images that he clipped from newspapers and magazines. His only requirement was that the photograph affected him in some way. Throughout his career he based some of his paintings, at least in part, on photographs. Examples include "Brothers", "Scotts Run, West Virginia", and others from both early and later in his career. Also, review the following two sections in the documentary:

• 26 minutes in; 6:30 duration
  Image: B&W photographs; narration in: "We drove west from Washington, we drove into Pennsylvania" through "but his painting was most important to him."
• 33 minutes in; 1:05 duration
  Image: B&W war photo; narration in: "But while at the Office of War Information" through "the sense of liberation."
  

BIBLIOGRAPHY/ REFERENCES

Resources

A look at how the desire to document conditions affected artists of all kinds in the 1930s.
Stott, William. Documentary Expression and Thirties America. New York, 1973. Rev. ed. 1986

Profiles of 15 FSA Photographers, including Shahn, Evans, Lange, and Parks.
Fleischhauer, Carl, and Beverly W. Brannan, eds. Documenting America, 1935-1943. Berkeley, California, 1988

Three families, through words and pictures. Ignored at the time, today it is a classic.
Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1939.

Pulitzer Prize-winning follow up on the families featured in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Maharidge, Dale, and Michael Williamson. And Their Children After Them. Pantheon, 1989

Essays on different aspects of Shahn’s work, including the artist’s thoughts on photography.
Morse, John D., ed. Ben Shahn. New York, 1972

A detailed look at how the changing political climate affected Shahn’s art.
Pohl, Frances K. Ben Shahn: New Deal Artist in a Cold War Climate, 1947-1954. Austin, Texas, 1989.

An impressionistic but journalistic approach to the Dustbowl era by a photographer and a writer.
Lange, Dorothea, and Paul Taylor. An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. New York, 1939. New edition, Paris, 1999.

An autobiography by the filmmaker, artist, and photographer describing his experiences as the first black FSA photographer.
Parks, Gordon. A Choice of Weapons. St. Paul, Minnesota, 1965.

ART CONNECTIONS STANDARD & BENCHMARKS
Standard 1: Understands connections among the various art forms and other disciplines

VISUAL ART STANDARDS & BENCHMARKS
Standard 1: Understands and applies media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts
Standard 2: Knows how to use structures (e.g., sensory qualities, organizational principles, expressive features) and functions of art
Standard 3: Knows a range of subject matter, symbols, and potential ideas in the visual arts
Standard 4: Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures
Standard 5: Understands the characteristics and merits of one's own artwork and the artwork of others

LANGUAGE ARTS STANDARDS & BENCHMARKS
Writing: Standard 1: Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process
Listening and Speaking: Standard 8: Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes
Viewing: Standard 9: Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media
Media: Standard 10:Understands the characteristics and components of the media

OBJECTIVES

In this lesson, students will

• Conduct visual research by identifying an image that affects them in a visceral or emotional way from the visual news media (newspapers, photographs, videotapes of television news, or printed images from the internet).
• Write a brief statement reflecting on how and why the image affects them.
• Create a tempera or acrylic painting using this photographic or still video image as a compositional or emotional reference (they will not create a photo-realist painting of a photograph).
• Analyze and discuss the ways in which their paintings differ from or are similar to the images used to inspire them.

SUPPLIES/ RESOURCE MATERIALS

• Newspapers, magazines, videotaped newscasts, printed internet images
• VHS of Ben Shahn: Passion for Justice
• Books with paintings and photographs by Ben Shahn and other politically involved artists (see bibliography)
• Gessoed masonite boards 15"x22" (12 can be cut from one 4’x8’ sheet)
• Quick-drying paint medium (tempera or acrylic)
• Pencils, brushes
• Sketchbooks, paper

TEACHING:

Step 1: Introduction

Have the students discuss how images in the news have affected them personally, recently and in the past. Show examples of photographs from various periods in history (Matthew Brady’s Civil War photos, Holocaust images, footage from Vietnam, Gulf War coverage, September 11^th video, etc.) to open up the discussion. View VHS of Ben Shahn: Passion for Justice. Discuss the differences between Shahn’s earlier and later paintings, and how he used photographs as source material for each. Assign research:

• Find an image in the news media that affects you emotionally or viscerally in some way.
• Write a paragraph on how and why it affects you, including both content and formal visual reasons (include citation for image: where it was found, content, date).

Step 2: Production

In a class discussion, review the found images together. Ask each student to identify an emotion or feeling he or she would like to explore further in a painting. Using their photographic images as starting points, have the students create thumbnail sketches in their sketchbooks. They should be brainstorming possibilities for the final painting. Gesso the masonite boards, and then have the students create sketches on the gessoed masonite boards. Have students create paintings, encouraging them to explore the emotional impact of color in addition to imagery (see Shahn’s red painting Allegory (in film 39:41 from zero; Narration in: "Allegory is one of those paintings…" and Brothers.

Step 3: Assessment/Review

In a final group critique, have students discuss the emotional impact of the paintings as well as their compositional strengths and weaknesses. Have them analyze the similarities and differences between the original images and the finished paintings. The review should include discussion of the concepts of universality, documentary, and communication. Evaluate students on their individual progress and on how well they fulfilled each step of the project, including research, effort, creative thinking, craftsmanship, use of time, and grasp of concepts.

Extension Activity

Hold an exhibit for the school. Create a display featuring each student’s original image, their descriptive paragraph about the image, and their final painting with a title that reflects their emotional goal.

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Lesson 2: Visual Politics

Research 1930s America through photographs taken by the Farm Security Administration. The FSA photographic unit included Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks among others. The FSA file contains over 160,000 images that in many ways now define our collective memory of Depression-era America. Many of the most important images are available online; many are also reproduced in books.

CIVICS STANDARDS & BENCHMARKS
What is Government and What Should it Do?
Standard 1: Understands ideas about civic life, politics, and government
What are the Basic Values and Principals of American Democracy?
Standard 14: Understands issues concerning the disparities between ideals and reality in American political and social life

What are the Roles of the Citizen in American Democracy?
Standard 29: Understands the importance of political leadership, public service, and a knowledgeable citizenry in American constitutional democracy

U.S. HISTORY STANDARDS & BENCHMARKS
Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Standard 24: Understands how the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state

HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING STANDARD & BENCHMARKS
Standard 2: Understands the historical perspective

All standards © 1995 - 2002 McREL www.mcrel.org

In this lesson, students will

• Review the seminal period of Depression era U.S. history.
• Conduct original research using the FSA photo files.
• Produce a written and visually documented final project.
• Discuss the role visuals play in the media, from propaganda to exposé.

Give an overview of the development of the FSA’s photographic unit. Encourage students to consider the difference between the glut of images we are confronted with on a daily basis today and the relative scarcity of images in the 1930s. Look at books of photographs by some of the major FSA photographers, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, and Gordon Parks. Give reading and research project assignments:

• Background reading including the establishment of the FSA photographic unit by economist Roy Stryker, the length of the project, how assignments were given to the photographers, how their photographs were used in publications
• Choose a FSA photographer or subject area from the FSA files to research (e.g., Gordon Parks or working conditions in Southern cotton fields)
• Final report guidelines, including number of pages and number and type of images to include. Review citation guidelines for both written and visual materials.

Assist students as they identify and refine their research papers. Include guidelines as to image copying (or downloading) and presentation. In class, continue discussion on the differences and similarities between propaganda and news coverage. Question whether topics that are not visually interesting are adequately covered by the media. Discuss the effect that the repetition of images has, including the possibility of over saturation — are we all becoming immune to death, disease, and destruction?

Have the students discuss their findings and observations. Class discussions will focus on how visual information alters the public’s perception of events (possible topics range from news black-outs in repressive societies to the limited access the news media had in the Gulf War). Go on to consider the implications this has for public policy. Students will be evaluated on their individual progress and on how well they fulfilled each step of the project, including research, original thinking, effort, presentation, time management, and grasp of concepts.

Have students create a power-point presentation using FSA photographs in conjunction with a verbal presentation of their research papers.

Mark Kobasz

Mark Kobasz has been a professional artist for over twenty years and he has taught art for the last ten. Currently he is a full-time certified teacher of art at Springfield High School in Erdenheim, Pennsylvania. Subjects taught include photography, sculpture, ceramics, and introduction to art.

In his own art, Mark works primarily with cast glass. The shapes he creates can be traced back to his early and ongoing fascination with minimalism, and the animism of indigenous art and architecture. His work is in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Arco Chemical Company, the Deloitte & Touche and Merck Corporations, and the Wustum Museum of Fine Art.

Mark is a part-time instructor at the Tyler School of Art and he has taught numerous workshops throughout the United States and Canada. Since 1995, Mark has been an Artist-in-Education with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, conducting residencies at elementary and middle schools in suburban and urban locations.

Mark has a B.F.A. from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and an M.A.T. from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He has received three Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and an Artist-As-Catalyst residency from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.