History of Photography — Module 11: Cold War Photography, Street Photography, and the Rise of Color
During the Cold War era, American photography shifted away from optimistic social documentary toward themes of alienation, psychological introspection, and abstraction. Photographers like Robert Frank and Diane Arbus captured the spiritual vacancy and marginalized figures of the American landscape. Concurrently, the medium embraced technological advancements like color film and Polaroids. By the 1960s and 1970s, photography extensively documented turbulent national events—including the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement—while simultaneously integrating into Pop and Conceptual art. Ultimately, the era highlighted a tension between pure photographic formalism and a rapidly expanding multimedia culture.
Street Photography and the Social Landscape
The Americans: Robert Frank used gritty, blurred, and tilted aesthetics to critique postwar materialism and capture a soul-damaged, isolated populace.
The Snapshot Aesthetic: Influenced by Weegee’s raw tabloid crime scenes, photographers like William Klein utilized blur, wide-angles, and flash overexposure to mimic instantaneous sight.
The Social Landscape: Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand focused on the formal qualities of camera vision, capturing chaotic street scenes and interpersonal tension without offering clear narratives.
Psychological Extremes: Diane Arbus photographed marginalized individuals and bizarre subjects as metaphors for her own psychological fragility.
Youth and Suburbia: Bruce Davidson and Danny Lyon deeply immersed themselves in youth countercultures, while the "New Topographics" movement and Bill Owens captured the banal, regularized isolation of the new American suburbs.
Advancements in Technology and Media
Color Photography: Initially confined to advertising and magazines, color was slowly elevated into fine art by pioneers like Eliot Porter and William Eggleston, despite resistance from traditionalists who found it vulgar.
The Polaroid: Edwin Land's instantaneous process was embraced by artists like Walker Evans for its quick feedback and ability to integrate color and form without pretense.
National Events and Photojournalism
The Civil Rights Movement: Photography and media coverage of events like the lynching of Emmett Till and the protests in Birmingham galvanized the public and became indelible symbols of racial strife
The Vietnam War: Photographers like Larry Burrows, Eddie Adams, and Nick Ut produced visceral, anti-heroic images of combat and civilian suffering that deeply undermined cozy, patriotic assumptions and fueled antiwar protests.
The Rise of Television: By the early 1970s, TV usurped picture magazines like Life as the dominant source for instantaneous news and cultural events, fundamentally altering mass media.
Photography in Contemporary Art
Pop Art: Artists like Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol nonchalantly appropriated mass-media imagery, celebrity portraits, and tabloids to simultaneously critique and celebrate consumerism.
Photorealism: Painters such as Chuck Close projected photographic slides onto canvas to precisely copy the flat, detailed look of a photograph.
Conceptual Art: Ed Ruscha and Robert Smithson treated the camera as a bland, inexpensive recording tool used to communicate concepts and document ephemeral events, stripping away the traditional aesthetic pretensions of fine art.
Philosophy and Institutionalization
John Szarkowski's Pantheon: As the director of MoMA's photography department, Szarkowski championed the medium's unique formal properties—such as the frame and vantage point—arguing that photography should abandon traditional pictorial standards
The Multimedia Challenge: Media guru Marshall McLuhan recognized that a new global "screen culture" of television, film, and mixed media was fundamentally shifting audience expectations away from pure photography toward pluralist, multimedia experiences.
Street and Social Landscape Photographers
Robert Frank: A Swiss-born photographer whose seminal book The Americans revolutionized documentary photography. He captured the alienation, spiritual vacancy, and commercialism of postwar America using tilted, gritty, and blurred aesthetics.
Lee Friedlander: A major figure in "social landscape" photography who viewed the medium as an exercise in camera vision. He frequently captured jumbles of street signs, storefront reflections, and even his own shadow to emphasize the framing and photographic process
Garry Winogrand: Often compared to Friedlander, Winogrand photographed human gestures and interpersonal tension on American streets using abrupt cropping and tilted cameras to reflect inner turmoil.
Diane Arbus: Known for her psychologically expressive portraits, Arbus turned normalcy on its head by naturalizing the unusual and highlighting the bizarre in ordinary people. She often used marginalized figures as metaphors for her own psychological fragility.
William Klein: A former painter who ignored traditional conventions, utilizing wide-angle lenses, blur, and flash overexposure to create experimental, aggressive images of New York City streets reminiscent of sensational tabloids.
Weegee (Arthur Fellig): A crime-scene photographer who anticipated emergencies using a short-wave radio. His unvarnished, raw images of murder and mayhem in New York heavily influenced postwar street photographers.
Abstract, Spiritual, and Conceptual Image-Makers
Minor White: Treated photography as a source of spiritual illumination and personal metaphor rather than just social betterment. He was a highly influential teacher and became the editor of the art photography magazine Aperture in 1952.
Aaron Siskind: An early example of the shift from social documentary to abstraction. He photographed peeling paint and human markings, flattening images to resemble Abstract Expressionist canvases.
Ed Ruscha: A West Coast Conceptual artist who used the camera as a bland recording tool to document banal subjects, such as his 1963 book Twentysix Gasoline Stations, prioritizing concepts over visual aesthetics.
Andy Warhol: A famous Pop artist who appropriated mass-produced tabloid images and paparazzi photographs into his silkscreen prints, simultaneously critiquing and exploiting consumerism and celebrity culture.
Robert Rauschenberg: An artist who incorporated mundane street objects, magazine clippings, and photographs into his "combines" and collages, breaking down the barrier between fine art and everyday life.
Photojournalists and Documentary Photographers
David Douglas Duncan: A photographer whose anti-heroic, close-up images of freezing and suffering soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam wars undermined patriotic, cozy assumptions about military conflict.
Bruce Davidson: Blended the dark outlook of postwar photography with attentive humanism. He is noted for his deep, years-long immersion into his subjects' lives, including a Brooklyn street gang and families in East Harlem.
Danny Lyon: Chronicled counter-cultural movements and social issues from the inside, photographing Midwestern motorcycle gangs as a member, and picturing Civil Rights events alongside the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Larry Burrows: A British photographer who captured the visceral reality of the Vietnam War before dying in a helicopter crash.
Color Photography Pioneers
William Eggleston: Praised for the "discovery of color photography" in the art world, he used the highly saturated dye-transfer printing method to elevate ordinary, vernacular objects—like tricycles and backyard barbecues—into compelling artistic metaphors.
Eliot Porter: Sponsored by the Sierra Club, he used color transparencies and the complex dye-transfer system to create permanent, radiant views of wilderness and nature.
The elevation of color from commercial tool to artistic decision is still at the center of editorial fashion photography. scottparkerphoto.com/fashion.
Curators and Cultural Theorists
John Szarkowski: The highly influential director of the Photography Department at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 1962 to 1991. He championed photography's unique formal properties—such as the frame, time, and vantage point—and elevated the work of photographers like Arbus, Eggleston, and Friedlander.
Marshall McLuhan: A prominent media guru who recognized how the collective environment of screens, television, and mixed media was fundamentally altering audience expectations and creating a new global culture.