McDannell, Colleen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2004. 319+ pp, $ 45.00 (USD). ISBN 0-300-10430-8.
[1] Dorothea Lange’s photograph Migrant Mother has
become the image associated with the Great Depression. The
woman stares out blankly while two children huddle near her. This
image and many others produced by the Farm Security Administration
(FSA, previously the Resettlement Administration) portrayed a secular
America in the grips of the Great Depression. In Picturing
the Faith, Colleen McDannell presents other photographs that
were not as iconic as Migrant Mother and display a different
story about the 1930s and 1940s in American history. McDannell
finds ordinary religion in the photographs of the FSA, and she uses
documentary photography to counter the prevailing historiographical
trend to label the 1930s and 1940s as a secular period in American
life.
[2] Picturing the Faith revolves around the interaction of
the “unchurched”—the FSA photographers and Roy
Stryker, their leader—and the “churched” subjects,
the itinerant ministers, the Okies, the rural folks, African American
churches in the cities, Jewish farming communities, and others. McDannell
writes, “Picturing the Faith tells the story of how
a set of photographers—who were not themselves religious—saw
religion in the United States” (5). She points out that
religious institutions might have been losing members, but religiosity
did not disappear; rather, it was lay-driven. The Great Depression
did not wipe out religion. It was a part of the culture of
the poor, and it sustained them and followed them from soup kitchens
to orchards to temporary housing to graveyards. Itinerants
followed the migration of people with their cars decorated with
biblical verses and warnings. Churches might have stood empty,
but ordinary piety remained.
[3] The FSA photographers found that faith abounded, but they also
found beauty in the abandoned churches and the people they documented. The
photographs were also works of art. Walker Evans, in particular,
was fascinated with southern churches. These churches provided
a “distinct American vernacular architecture,” and their
simplicity allowed the artists to interpret the buildings (56). However,
the churches that were photographed always lacked people. McDannell
proposes that Evans, and also Lange, preferred empty space because
the “power of religion” for them resided in space and
form (63). The FSA photographs thus documented the ordinary
piety of their subjects and the photographers’ own conceptions
of religion. Photographing religion also provided a way to
preserve the dignity of the poor (83).
[4] The reformist agenda of the FSA photographers, however, was
not always favourable to religion. For instance, the photographs
of John Vachon represented Christian charities as distant (and inadequate)
from the reforms of the New Deal. McDannel writes, “He
used his camera to harshly judge the practices of religious people” (114). Dorothea
Lange’s photographs of the Salvation Army presented them as
only religious, which ignored their charitable work. The photographers
manipulated their subjects to fit their own interpretations, and
McDannell gives instances of both positive and negative interpretations
of religion by the FSA photographers. More importantly, these
photographs portrayed religious activity in a time when religious
participation was on the decline. McDannell’s work uses
photography as medium to contest a prominent historiographical trope
of secularization of America in the 1930s and 1940s.
[5] Not surprisingly, McDannell has provided another monograph that
challenges American religious historians to find new sources for
their work. Her Material Christianity (Yale University
Press, 1995) urged scholars to look at the “stuff” of
religion, and this work urges us to examine photographs and what
they can add to the historical record. She successfully uses
this medium to show how religion was still an important facet in
the lives of ordinary people during the Great Depression. She
writes, “Rather than being a time of retreat from the supernatural,
the Depression years were a time when Americans intensely engaged
the world beyond and integrated it into their everyday lives” (277). However,
McDannell, like any good historian, realizes the limitations of
her sources. Photographs are often depictions of religion
with the sound turned off. The FSA found beauty in their subjects
that can overwhelm viewers yet we have to realize that there are
other elements to religious experience that we miss. Cultural
expressions never fully capture the soul of the faith.
[6] Overall, this work could be beneficial to scholars of religious
studies, history, or art history. McDannell interweaves facets
of the aforementioned disciplines masterfully. Picturing
the Faith is a great addition to American religious historiography
and a great read, which is not to be underestimated. I would
recommend it for one’s bookshelf or even one’s coffee
table because the photographs are poignant (and beautiful) images
of American’s religious culture.
Kelly J. Baker
Florida State University
kjb6056@fsu.edu
