Social RealismPhotographic Styles

Social RealismAn international art movement, refers to the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. Jean-Francios Millet - Angelus (1860)

Industrial Revolution

In 19th-century England the Industrial Revolution aroused a concern in many artists for the urban poor.

Luke Fildes, Motherless, 1914

Text

Vincent Van GoghExplored social realism in his early paintings, most famously 'The Potato Eaters' in 1885

The Artists International Association

An exhibiting society founded in London in 1933, which held exhibitions and events to promote and support various left-of centre political causes

Clive BransonBombed Women and Searchlights

1940

Jacob A. RiisBandit's Roost (1888) , from How the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit's Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.

Photography in USAit reached a culmination in the worker–photographer movements in Europe and the work by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn and others for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) project in the USA in 1935–43.

A juke joint located in Belle Glade, Florida. Photographed by Marion Post Wolcott in 1944.

Themes

Urban decay

The effects of austerity cuts

Decline of heavy industry

Style

Black & white

Washed out colour

Grainy

Bleak