What makes great photography - 80 masterpieces explained - Val Williams

On a free afternoon whilst visiting the London Paralypics, Rachael dropped into The Photographers Gallery. Explaining my Art predicament he recommended she picked up a copy of this book. I have decided to work through it and give my reading of the images before I read the supporting text.

For each of the images there are some other similar photographs which I will also look up.

The first is Textile Mill, USA by Lewis Hine.



My reading - This is a photograph of a young girl working at a loom in the 1920's. She is small and rather dwarfed by the massive weaving equipment. There are no safety guards or protective clothing and it makes me feel nervous that she is working with loose clothes and hair near dangerous equipment. She appears to be working alone except for the woman in the background who might be her supervisor. This image I think was taken to show the conditions under which children work.

Val Williams - This image is a part of a series intended to to highlight to the public the working conditions of children with a view to bringing about change regarding child labour. I missed the sense of scale imparted by the camera position relative to the subject. By making her deliberately a small portion of the image her scale compared to the machinery is emphasised. The height of the camera cleverly aligns the girls head with the top of the machinery.

Additional recommended images

Clearly there are child labour is alive and kicking.

Earing money for basics was alive and kicking in the the 40's too. See my fathers book describing how he made money as a child collecting glass jars from amongst the horses heads at Bristol rubbish dumps.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penny-a-Jar-ebook/dp/B005J86KNO

Textile factory, Moscow, Soviet Union, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1954



Rubbish dump Smokey Mountain Manila, Stuart Franklin



Child with star mask, El Savador, Larry Towell