{"title":"Gossip on Main Street: Visualizing Oral Exchange in Mid-Twentieth-Century Small-Town Photography and Art","authors":"William A. Carroll","doi":"10.1017/S0021875822000202","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the visual representation of gossip, rumourmongering, storytelling, and other analogues of oral exchange in mid twentieth-century small-town American visual narrative. I herein examine two key visual artists of the interwar period – photographer Ben Shahn and painter Norman Rockwell – and their place within the small-town narrative form, as well as Life magazine and its institutional small-town preoccupations. Considering Shahn's photographic work conducted as part of the Farm Security Administration to Rockwell's culturally dominant scenes of idyllic small-town life, I argue that both emphasize gossip's narratability despite their drastically different provenance. Opposing Shahn's scenes of Depression-era poverty with Rockwell's homogeneous vignettes of rural life, it will be concluded that gossip and oral exchange remained a vital narrative constituent for artists of the small town during the mid-twentieth century, and that its narrative significance cannot be overstated.","PeriodicalId":14966,"journal":{"name":"Journal of American Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of American Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875822000202","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article explores the visual representation of gossip, rumourmongering, storytelling, and other analogues of oral exchange in mid twentieth-century small-town American visual narrative. I herein examine two key visual artists of the interwar period – photographer Ben Shahn and painter Norman Rockwell – and their place within the small-town narrative form, as well as Life magazine and its institutional small-town preoccupations. Considering Shahn's photographic work conducted as part of the Farm Security Administration to Rockwell's culturally dominant scenes of idyllic small-town life, I argue that both emphasize gossip's narratability despite their drastically different provenance. Opposing Shahn's scenes of Depression-era poverty with Rockwell's homogeneous vignettes of rural life, it will be concluded that gossip and oral exchange remained a vital narrative constituent for artists of the small town during the mid-twentieth century, and that its narrative significance cannot be overstated.
期刊介绍:
Journal of American Studies seeks to critique and interrogate the notion of "America", pursuing this through international perspectives on the history, literature, politics and culture of the United States. The Journal publishes original peer-reviewed research and analysis by established and emerging scholars throughout the world, considering US history, politics, literature, institutions, economics, film, popular culture, geography, sociology and related subjects in domestic, continental, hemispheric, and global contexts. Its expanded book review section offers in-depth analysis of recent American Studies scholarship to promote further discussion and debate.