Author: mtt

Dorothea Lange

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1895 – 1965

Location: U.S.

Back in the 1930’s the U.S. Government had a program called the FSA (Farm Security Administration) that hired artists to  document the plight of the rural poor.

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

War Boutique

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b: 1965  Location: Glasgow, Scotland

War Boutique is a textile artist re-purposing instruments of war into embodiments of peace.

“Society is breaking down as we speak, some people are not aware of that because they live in their ivory towers. It’s about time, I think, for a social change and that it’s coming very close. If things do get a bit rough you can nip down the war boutique and get your helmets and vests and protect yourself.”

Artist Website

Ron English

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Location: U.S.

“English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie ‘Supersize Me,’ and Abraham Obama, the fusion of America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image widely discussed in the media as directly impacting the 2008 election.”

Website

Michael D’Antuono

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Location: U.S.

D’Antuono’s provocative takes on racism, class warfare, the environment, corporate influence and other hot-button issues have made him the object of censorship and derision by those who want to protect the status-quo. Yet he continues to make art that speaks truth to power, perpetuating the historic role of the artist to spark social change.

Artist Website

Danny Lyon

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b. 1942  Location:U.S.

“America will never change until there is a revolution in the Media”

“When activist photography appeared on the scene in the early 1960’s we assumed that a revolution was at hand. Here was a medium that was realistic, easily artistic, and democratically available to anyone that could afford the one dollar cost of a roll of bulk loaded Tri-X. The marriage of the B&W photograph with the offset printing press was a marriage made in heaven; for the realistic picture could be reproduced and available to thousands for a reasonable amount of cash. This happy marriage should have spawned dozens of picture magazines helping to radicalize America and putting the power of the press into thousands of individual hands. This did not happen. Instead the explosion of interest in photography spurned few magazines, but hundreds of art galleries instead. Today, galleries, not magazines, have become the major venue for exhibiting pictures. Photography itself has been distorted and changed from what it should have been, into many things it was never meant to be. Photography works best when it does what it is uniquely qualified to do as a medium: reproduce the real world.”

“The point is to replace the rotten, hysterical, fear and greed driven myths that have so much power, with our own myths.  The good myths. The myths that are made out of courage, not out of fear. The myths we believe in: Truth, Justice, and the Beauty of this, our Mother Earth.”

-Danny Lyon

Danny Lyon’s Blog

Danny Lyon’s Conversations With The Dead

Video of Danny Lyon in conversation with Julian Bond about their involvement in the early civil rights movement:

Charles Moore

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1931 – 2010

Location: U.S.

Montgomery, Alabama photojournalist whose photographs are credited with helping quicken the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

 

Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera:

Mear One

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b. 1971

Location: U.S.

“Graffiti Art stems from a profound place of intellect & understanding, which incorporates a political opinion & an attitude towards the authorities that be, a form of social resistance, a reclaiming of one’s personal environment & space without the need for permission, it requires that you follow up your opinion with an action, that you vandalize the wall, that you destroy the surface in order to change it, beautify it, rearrange it as you see fit. Sadly, so much of the street art movement has fueled itself on appropriation & a fundamental lack of any original, critical thought, in line with the term retro & is a remake of something else that has roots in a deep, rich history, except it has been diluted, simplified or all together removed for a street goers quick take & perspective, homogenized, gentrified, commercialized, man fuck it, thieves. You can’t repackage and sell my culture back to me. Graffiti was the first art form that took the power of creativity from the institutional elite, the museum, the upper classes and brought it down to a street level in the ghetto where no one else would go except those who were already there. To be a Graffiti artist means you have to take part in this lifestyle, you can’t fake it.” – Mear One

More Info

The making of Allegory of Complacency: