1961 Mark Shaw Photo of Jacquline Kennedy on Cover of People Magazine

The new issue of People Magazine features a 1961 photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy by Mark Shaw. This photo of Jackie, taken by Mark Shaw for the cover of “Look” magazine in 1961, has been seen frequently due to the fact that it was mistakenly distributed all over the world by the White House as an “official White House photo.” In fact, Mark Shaw retained the rights to all his photographs, an unusually forward thinking decision at that time.

Mark Shaw lived from 1922-1969. He was born in New York's Lower East Side, the only son of a Lower East Side seamstress and an unskilled laborer. He was a student at New York's Pratt Institute where he majored in Engineering. He became a highly decorated World War II Air Force pilot. Shaw was chosen to fly Russia's famous tank commander, General Zhukov, to his meeting with the Allied Command. He was also chosen to be part of the command that flew General MacArthur and his staff to sign the armistice papers in Tokyo.

After the War, Shaw started working as a professional photographer and soon became a freelancer for LIFE magazine.

As a photographer he is perhaps best known for his images of Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy and their family which he originally shot as their family photographer. After JFK's death a selection of photographs was published as a book "The John F. Kennedy's - A family album". This book sold over 200,000 copies when it first came out, very impressive even today. In 2000 Rizzoli published an updated version of "The John F. Kennedy's - A family Album," featuring many never before seen color and black and white photographs. Most recently, Mark Shaw’s images of the Kennedys were widely used in the exhibition “Jacqueline Kennedy – The White House Years”, originating at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and later traveling around the country.

 Only two weeks before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote a note to Shaw, one of many, thanking him for photographs of her with her three-year-old, John F. Kennedy Jr.: "They really should be in the National Gallery! I have them propped up in our Sitting Room now, and everyone who comes in says the one of me and John looks like a Caravaggio—and the one of John, reflected in the table, like some wonderful, strange, poetic Matisse. And, when I think of how you just clicked your camera on an ordinary day in that dreary, green Living Room. I just can't thank you enough, they will always be my greatest treasures. Anyone who puts a finger-print on them will have his hand chopped!"

 Also leading fashion photographer, Mark Shaw worked for Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and a host of other fashion magazines. He started working for Life magazine in 1952 and in 16 years shot 27 covers and almost 100 stories. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Mark Shaw shot the European fashion collections for Life, and was one of the first photographers to shoot fashion on the runways and "backstage" at the couture shows.

Related: mptv Mark Shaw image on the cover of People Magazine

“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war”

Must Read, Must See: "Hell and Back Again" Afghanistan Documentary

Via The New York Times Lens PhotoBlog:

As the Afghan war neared a decade’s worth of combat, casualties and headlines, the photographer and filmmaker Danfung Dennis was looking to jolt people’s consciousness.

“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war,” said Mr. Dennis, who had covered Afghanistan as a still photographer in 2006. “I moved into video and new media to try to shake people up — to show the war’s brutal reality in an honest way.”

Did he ever. “Hell and Back Again,”  his new award-winning documentary film about the war, is a tour de force that breaks new ground in the documentary tradition, combining chilling reportage with sometimes dreamy or drugged-up sequences. The film – with clinical precision – peels away the daily headlines to expose the reality of the Afghan war and the devastating burden carried by American service members back home.

Full post here with video.

GETTY MUSEUM DISPLAYS FIRST COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYONEL FEININGER

A Selection of Bauhaus Photographs from the Getty Museum's Permanent Collection Complements the Exhibition

Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939

Via The Getty Trust

LOS ANGELES—Widely recognized as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman who taught at the Bauhaus, Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871–1956) turned to photography later in his career as a tool for visual exploration. Drawn mostly from the collection at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, October 25, 2011–March 11, 2012, presents for the first time Feininger's unknown body of photographic work. The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of photographs by other Bauhaus masters and students from the Getty Museum's permanent collection. The Getty is the first U.S. venue to present the exhibition, which will have been on view at the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from February 26–May 15, 2011 and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich from June 2–July 17, 2011. Following the Getty installation, the exhibition will be shown at the Harvard Art Museums from March 30–June 2, 2012. At the Getty, the exhibition will run concurrently with Narrative Interventions in Photography.

"We are delighted to be the first U.S. venue to present this important exhibition organized by the Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum," says Virginia Heckert, curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the Getty's installation. "The presentation at the Getty provides a unique opportunity to consider Lyonel Feininger's achievement in photography, juxtaposed with experimental works in photography at the Bauhaus from our collection."

Read the full Press Release here.

Related: Andreas Feininger

Exhibition Celebrates 2011 Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism Recipient Bill Eppridge

©Bill Eppridge:  sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce an extensive exhibition of more than 50 important photographs by Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. The exhibit opens with a reception on Friday, September 30, from 5 - 7 PM; and continues through November 20. 

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to Bill Eppridge, who will receive the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism at a special ceremony October 24 at Lincoln Center in New York.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

 For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge's most important photo essays together, including:

 The Beatles: Bill Eppridge really didn't know who the Beatles were, but "One morning my boss said, 'Look, we've got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They're called the Beatles.'" Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and "stick with them." He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964.

©Bill Eppridge: Beatle Fans scramble for Jelly Beans, Washington Coliseum, 1964

"These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around," Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. "I'm not going to ask you to do a thing," was Eppridge's reply. "I just want to be there." An exhibit of Eppridge's Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Murder: In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

©Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

 In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.

Robert F. Kennedy: One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to "stay as close as you can to Bobby". Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn't be far behind. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: "You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian."

"I believe our world is at a time right now in which it should be documented completely. If we can influence people with photographs, maybe we'll be able to maintain our planet." -- Bill Eppridge

 View the exhibition here.

"There are many historically crucial artworks at the Instanbul Biennial"

Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner | Photo by Cemre Mert

Via Instanbul The Guide

The 12^th Istanbul Biennial came in much secrecy but it was totally worth the anxious wait. In the press opening, curators Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa stated that the reason for the secrecy was to prevent pre-consumption of the artists and their works. This year, it was not only the secrecy that was new but also the decision in limiting the exhibition spaces. The show used to be scattered around the city, taking advantage of its intricate urban structure; however, this time around the curators chose to house the exhibitions in two large warehouses in Tophane, famously known as Antrepo 3 and Antrepo 5.

When: September 17–November 13

The Venue
Having cut down on the exhibition spaces, the curators commissioned the Office of Ryue Nishizawa to design the interior. The unique architecture clearly reflects some aspects of Istanbul. Rooms of different sizes leading one into passageways, shortcuts, and multiple rooms create distinct interior-exterior relationships. The architecture, thus, manages to create the city structure that it borrows from Istanbul, while adding a touch of Gonzales-Torres’s minimal and elegant approach to art.

The Concept
The Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) is the point of departure of the 12^th Istanbul Biennial. Gonzalez-Torres was one of those artists who constantly demonstrated that the personal is political. As in previous years, the twelfth edition of the Biennial delves into the relationship between art and politics. There are both politically outspoken works, and formally innovative and curious art pieces. One of the refreshing aspects of the Biennial is its balanced use of diverse artistic mediums.

The Sections
The venue houses 5 group exhibitions and 50 solo shows. Each of the group exhibitions are marked by gray walls, occupying a room for each subdivision: Untitled (Death by Gun), Untitled (Ross), Untitled (History), Untitled (Passport), and Untitled (Abstraction). Marked by white walls, the solo shows are situated around the group exhibitions. All continents are represented in the show but there is a special focus on Latin America and the Middle East.

The Works
There are many historically crucial artworks at the Biennial. For instance, in the section Untitled (Death by Gun), there is Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner taken in three frames by the American photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1968. As shocking and gruesome as they were, these photographs brought a much-needed discussion around the Vietnam War.

Bullet Hole | Photo by Cemre Mert
 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, The choice of happiness

 

The choice of happiness © Jacques Henri Lartigue

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

Forma, the Foundation of photography in Milan presents an exhibition of photographs by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, one of photography’s precocious prodigies, a genial enthusiast and a professional of happiness.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue achieved fame during the sixties, on the threshold of his eight decade, when his photographs reached the spaces of the MOMA in New York.

He was born into a wealthy French bourgeois family at the beginning of the twentieth century. From an early age the young Lartigue began to capture the romance of his family life in images, images seen through the eyes of a child, full of wonder and laughter. From then on, this ‘boy’ who spent his long life without ever having to worry about making ends meet, would manage to create images of infinite poetry and rare grace, thanks to his spontaneity and intimacy and a magic that still enchants us today.

Together with his diary, photography was Lartigue’s record of his experience and the things he wished to experience; an attempt to find happiness for himself and his charmed little world, happiness that might last for ever. Thus, every day he would collect amazing images with his camera, waterfalls and fountains, happy friends, beautiful smiling women, fluttering dresses, car races, seaside outings, fragments of carefree joy, wishing, with aching nostalgia, that that day might never end.

From 5 October, the exhibition will be further enriched with select pages from the great photographer’s diary and his albums of large photographs: JH Lartigue. Diary in Images.

 

Jacques Lartigue was born in Courbevoie, in France, on 13 June 1894. At the age of six he took his first photographs using his father’s camera and began writing a diary which he continued to keep throughout his life.

From 1904 he began to photograph his childhood experiences, family games and then the beginnings of aviation and the first automobiles, the “beauties of the Bois de Bouologne” and social and sporting events. As a curious amateur he experimented with all the available photographic techniques. As a tireless collector of the moments of his own life, he took several thousand photographs which he diligently gathered in his large albums. It would appear, however, that this was not his vocation, instead, he wanted painting to be his profession. He met several artists, such as Sacha Guitry, Kees van Dongen, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. As a film enthusiast he photographed the sets of various films by Jacques Feyder, Abel Gance, Robert Bresson, François Truffaut and Federico Fellini.

It was the great exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the publication of an important photo portfolio in Life, which earned Jacques Lartigue, at the age of 69, a place among the great photographers. Adding his father’s name to his own he became Jacques Henri Lartigue, and three years later his first book Album de Famille, and later Instants de ma Vie (designed by Richard Avedon), brought him worldwide recognition and appreciation. Lartigue died in Nice on 12 September 1986.

Emiliana Tedesco
The choice of happiness
From September 23 to November 20, 2011
Fondazione FORMA per la Fotografia
Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro 1
20136 Milano
02.58118067

Links

http://www.formafoto.it

La Lettre de la Photographie: "Born from a dream and from our assessment that in the current new medias no one was covering photography in its entire extent, our Lettre shares and informs daily on the events in the world of photography.

The web site is deemed free and all the featured contents are free to the viewers, without any previous engagement from them. The web site covers entirely all the current events in the world of photography, with the exception of the technical aspects.

Available in English and French, La lettre is featured in the form of a “newsletter”, a web site and an iPad application to all audiences interested in photography."

-- a highly recommended daily source for photography information.

ERNST HAAS: COLOR CORRECTION

The acclaim for Steidl's new book of Ernst Haas' color photography continues. Today, La Lettre de la Photographie covered the recently published book Color Correction.

THOUGHTS ON AN EXHIBITION

 HISTORY'S BIG PICTURE

This is the final week for the exhibition "History's Big Picture". We always find ourselves discussing our impressions and thoughts and the feedback we received from gallery visitors and collectors as each exhibit concludes. This time, it is different.

We have each been involved in the art world for 30 years. We couldn't begin to count the number of exhibits we have visited - or hosted as galleriests - over that period.

"History's Big Picture" coincided with the start of the 10 year anniversary of our move to Santa Fe, and after more than 55 exhibits here we wanted to present a very special exhibit, one that somehow emphasized the necessity of understanding and appreciating photojournalism.

There have been many exhibits that we wished could have run longer. This will be the first that will be actually difficult to take down. Since the opening on July 2, the exhibit has been seen by many thousands of viewers, timed as it was to coincide with the busy Santa Fe summer season. Visitors from all over the world have experienced a walk through the past 80 years in history: young, old, tours, school groups, veterans, politicians, museum curators, collectors, the "famous", and even a few homeless. We have seen parents quietly explaining the situation behind a photograph to their children, we have seen people softly weeping, and the quiet of the gallery has occasionally been startled by someone gasping "Oh my God!".

The exhibit progresses chronologically, starting in 1930's Germany with photographs of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, and the first meeting of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that have caused several visitors to whirl about and face the front desk and exclaim "This is serious!"

The photographs from Depression-era America have instantly resonated with gallery guests as they compare that time with the current economic condition. Interestingly, the same comparison has just recently been addressed in articles in the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.

And from there the exhibition continues, a roller coaster through World War II, the 1950's; the brief hope of John Kennedy and the violent and shocking end of that hope; through the civil rights struggle and another shocking assassination, the shining hope of Robert Kennedy, the devastation of his assassination; the horror of Vietnam, the shock of 9/11, and the complicated consequences of America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The final photograph is by Eric Smith of the casket of an Iraq War soldier on an empty stage prior to his memorial service delivers visitors near the exit and the front desk, and often a conversation ensues. Some need to talk, some need comfort, some have been angry, and some have been inspired to find out more.

This exhibition has affirmed our steadfast belief in the power of a photograph. The exhibit's press release stated "Photographers in this exhibition illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life." And on the About Us page of our website we state " The way a photograph can capture time, emotions, and feelings makes photography a unique art form". We have witnessed this first hand and in a very powerful confirmation during this exhibit.

We are so grateful for all of the participating photographers, so many of whom we have been privileged to have known know personally. For those who are no longer living with us, we thank their families. For those still working, we honor your commitment and service to humanity.

We are so very thankful to all who have visited the exhibit. There are discussions about the possibility of travelling the exhibit to some museums, so if you missed it stay tuned. It will continue to live on our website in the Archived Showcase section as well.

Thank you.

"If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing."

 

Roger Fenton /Smithsonian/AP
Some believe photographer Roger Fenton placed the cannonballs on the Ukrainian road during the Crimean War himself


Errol Morris Looks For Truth Outside Photographs
 September 17, 2011
Via NPR

Believing Is Seeing

Observations on the Mysteries of Photography

by Errol Morris

Hardcover, 310 pages | purchase

Errol Morris is regarded as one of the world's most important filmmakers and is best known for his documentaries The Thin Blue Line and the Oscar-award winning Fog of War.

But before he was a filmmaker, he was a detective and he's always been interested in uncovering the mysteries of photographs. In his new book, Believing Is Seeing, Morris focuses on the things you can't see in photographs and the importance of what lies outside the frame.

Morris tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that his obsession with photos began when he was a small boy and his father died.

"I was only 2 years old [and] don't have any memory of him at all. But there were photographs of him all over the house," he says. "I remember looking at these photographs; this is someone that I should know, probably should remember, but there's this mystery."

Photo Manipulation

Trying to recover the context of photographs is a theme in Morris' book. In one example, he takes his critical eye to two photos of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton in the 1850s. Both images are shot from the same spot, but one shows markedly more cannonballs on the road than the other. Photography scholars have long considered the photo with more cannonballs as the first instance of a photo manipulation. They say it was done by Fenton to drum up drama about the war for his British readership.

But Morris disagrees. He says no one can be sure if Fenton added or removed the cannonballs from the frame.

"I walked away thinking I really don't know. We all know that staging is that big no-no in photography. I would call it a fantasy that we can create some photographic truth by not moving anything, not touching anything, not interacting with the scene that we're photographing in any way," he says. "If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing."

Staged Dust Bowl

Morris says photographers have been posing photos as long as they've been taking them. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt sent out photographers to capture what life was like during the Dust Bowl. An iconic image taken by Arthur Rothstein of a cow skull on a barren landscape was meant to show the drama of the drought.

"Then they found out he had taken multiple photographs of the cow skull and clearly it had been moved," he says. "Well, people who were opposed to the Roosevelt administration seized on this. They became outraged, they felt manipulated, deceived; [there were] allegations that Rothstein had actually brought the cow skull with him from Washington."

Even though there actually was a drought, Morris says, critics were quickly caught up in the deception.

 

 

Arthur Rothstein/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection

Overgrazed Land. Pennington County, South Dakota (1936) is one of several photographs Arthur Rothstein took to document dry, sun-baked earth of the South Dakota Badlands.

"Was he trying to deceive the public? Was he trying to use the photograph for propaganda? If not him, was it the newspaper editors who placed it in their newspapers?" he says. "And it goes into that whole question of what is propaganda. Can any photograph be used for the purposes of propaganda?"

Parallels Between Filmmaking, Photography

Morris says when he first started making films, he was accused of making documentaries the wrong way.

"People would say, 'You're not supposed to use Philip Glass music, you're not supposed to use reenactments.' And my answer then — and it's still my answer over the years — is that style is not what guarantees truth," he says.

Morris says there's no such thing as a true or false photograph, and that doesn't really matter anyway. He says the most important thing is to ask any documentarian — in film, photography or print — to pursue the truth.

Read an excerpt of Believing Is Seeing

Photographing the Great Depression, then and now

Florence Owens Thompson, a migrant worker and mother of seven children. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Getty Images

Dorothea Lange's stark portraits of poverty-stricken Americans in the 1930s seem terrifyingly contemporary

Jonathan Jones

 Friday 16 September 2011 09.00 EDT

Via the Guardian

Faces from the Great Crash of 1929 and its aftermath are haunting the 21st century. Wall Street brokers fleeing the trading floor in panic, or putting their cars on sale because they are suddenly broke, appear in old black-and-white photographs beside analyses of the current state of the markets composed by sombre authorities. Not only the collapse of confidence that shattered investors 82 years ago but the long years of misery that followed now seem to call out to us, to warn us, to show us a truth that is urgent and immediate. Can this really be so? Can that nightmare history be repeating itself?

This week an American paper, the Los Angeles Times, republished one of the most renowned of all depression photographs. Dorothea Lange was working in 1936 for an American government agency called the Resettlement Administration, documenting the journeys of desperate farm labourers in search of work. In Nipomo, California she met Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Lange's picture of the road-weary family has endured because it is an intimate human portrait, that cuts through statistics and abstractions to show us real life in the Depression. The weather-beaten, stoical, dignified face of Thompson, her children burying themselves in her for protection, speaks of poverty that is not destined, or deserved, or inevitable, of people whose suffering is random, cruel and, surely, preventable.

Out of the Great Depression in 1930s America and Europe came a broad acceptance that society needed to do better, that markets could not guarantee universal wealth or even survival by themselves, that governments needed to do two things as a matter or course: manage the economy, and ensure the welfare of citizens. At least the western democracies reached this consensus by 1945, after 16 years of chaos, during which far more dangerous alternatives to capitalism took the world by storm. Lange's photograph was shocking in 1936 because it revealed that extreme poverty now existed on a frightening scale in the United States, the country where wealth was freest, industry most advanced, whose business was business. If capitalism was failing in America, did that mean it was finished?

In 1936, when this picture was taken, many believed Karl Marx right in his prediction that capitalism would be broken by its contradictions. They looked admiringly to Russia or even joined communist parties. Meanwhile, Hitler's Germany blamed the troubles on Jewish financiers and created work through massive public schemes. Liberal, capitalist democracy would only regain strength with the new consensus for welfare and planning that emerged from the second world war.

The face of Florence Owens Thompson in Lange's photograph is hemmed in by shadows of this dark period in history. So why did she make her appearance on the LA Times the other day, on the breakfast tables of film producers and television executives? The article was asking why today's artists have not risen to the challenge of depicting what it claimed is already a new depression – where is our Dorothea Lange? Yet the real question seems to be why we suddenly find images of the 1930s pertinent and recognisable and … contemporary.

The stark images of the 1929 crash and the 1930s depression that currently haunt us are forebodings, night terrors, nervous jitters. They express something essential about the state of the world in 2011: fear.

Nothing is scarier than the thought that we might be repeating the history of the 1930s. There is no more terrifying period in human history. The economic travails of that time tore apart societies. Americans suffered catastrophic poverty, as shown in Lange's photograph. Germans succumbed to the politics of hate, Spain became a battleground, soon Europe would be one. All that is evoked in chilling photographs of the depression era.

This is a moment of sweat and nerves. Over the summer, financial news got eerie. As it happens, the nightmare scenarios have not yet come to pass – some were predicting a collapse of the euro in August. The threat of Washington failing to raise the American debt ceiling was another panic averted at the last moment. But the fears continue.

Fear is a historical force. At the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 peasants were driven to violence by a "great fear", a panic that swept the countryside. It was, of course, during the Great Depression that president Franklin D Roosevelt made his famous speech denouncing the irrationality of fear. He used his inaugural address in 1933 to urge "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance".

Here is something truly eerie – the thing we have in common with the people of the Great Depression is a mood of deepening fear, "nameless, unreasoning …"

In America in 1933, Roosevelt faced down fear and insisted that rational measures could defy the forces of destruction. Meanwhile, that same year Hitler took power with a politics of pure unreason that feasted on terror.

Today it is avowedly democratic politicians who seem ready to exacerbate terror. Deficits are talked up as ghoulish menaces, social ills blamed on moral decay. In America, government itself, as any kind of rational agent for reform, is widely portrayed as a monster.

When Lange took her photograph, times were terrible. But there were powerful voices of optimism and rationality, from Roosevelt to John Maynard Keynes, and these voices would win through in the end. In 2011 American politics seems headed in the opposite direction to the forward-looking road it took in the 1930s, while everywhere primitive gloom is in the ascendant. In this sense the situation does not resemble the 1930s. It is potentially far worse.


Related: Facing Change: Documenting America