So with this, I wanted to compose an essay on the intersection between the history of photography and empathy by analyzing each in writing and show how each image played a role in shifting society’s view towards a historical event, marginalized group, or person.
By Richard Drew
This photograph, Falling Man was taken by Richard Drew on September 11, 2001, shows a man who chose to jump out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center instead of being incinerated by the explosion from the airplane that crashed into it. It was a day that changed the world forever. Millions of Americans changed their opinion of Islam. Muslims were now looked upon as our enemy. This caused a long-term change in how Americans, tested by a horrendous terrorist act, see Muslims as an enemy capable of doing anything to anyone using inhuman tactics.
On September 11th and for months after we saw the events of that day in photographs. The country felt deep empathy for the people murdered that day. Our ability to put ourselves in their shoes, however, was not possible. No one in America had experienced an attack of this magnitude. This attack just made Americans angry because we had already been through other terrorist attacks like the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, and more. Add this to the hundreds of attacks throughout the world and it’s no wonder we live in fear of the people that are the perpetrators.
This picture invoked positive and negative vibes. Many Americans didn’t mind seeing the photographs of the planes hitting the buildings, the smoke billowing out, and people escaping the buildings and running for their very lives. These pictures didn’t show the actual deaths of people. We knew that is what was happening but we could put that aside because we didn’t see them. So, when this picture was published there was an uproar. We see a man totally in despair and when faced with two ways to die he chose jumping. The fear he must have felt on his fall to death. Of all the photographs taken that day this photograph is the only one people thought was inappropriate and received much criticism for putting in the newspaper. No photograph taken the day the World Trade Centers came down was appropriate to see. But the whole story needed to be told with the written word and photographs for all to remember in years to come.
By Dorothea Lange
Lange’s photographs were taken during the time of the Great Depression when people were suffering through natural disasters as well as a national economic crisis. Lange was part of the Resettlement Administration established by Franklin D. Roosevelt's social policies. This was a team of photographers hired to document the lives of migrant workers. She was among the agency photographers whose task was to inform Americans about the world around them. Lange’s work reflected insight, compassion, and empathy for the people she photographed. Her photographs, in turn, struck compassion and empathy in the viewers.
The photograph “Migrant Mother” came to symbolize what was going on during the depression and how it affected the migrant workers as well as most people living at that time. This black and white image shows a woman, who is about the age of 30, and three young children. Two of the children are hiding behind the mother and the third she is holding in her arms. The woman looks distressed or concerned. The way her hand is placed on her face and the way she is looking out into the distance shows she is worried. The clothing looks old and worn down, representative of the 1930s and the Great Depression. She is stranded in a squatter’s camp where the workers picked peas.
Lange captured this part of American history to show us how hard this time was for these people and to show how blessed we are to live the way we do today.
By Louis Wickes Hine
Photographs significantly contributed to child labor reform in America. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution began. This was a time when parents owned their children and could force them to work in the mills and mines for long hours and little pay. This child labor was ignored by the government and the public. Although reform badly was needed, it was slow to come. The National Child Labor Committee was formed, and they wanted to hire a photographer to document child labor issues to bring the issues to the public. That photographer was Louis Wickes Hine (1874-1940).
Hine, who was trained as a sociologist with an interest in photography, experienced first-hand the exploitation of young workers. He was the first to use a camera for a social documentary. His photographs changed the public perception ultimately pressuring state legislatures to change the child labor laws.
After viewing all of Hine’s photographs I felt great compassion and empathy for the working children. This picture is of a young girl working as a spinner in a textile mill. There are pictures of small children picking cotton, picking tobacco, working in coal mines, shucking oysters, and pulling beets. The ages ranged from 6 years old to 13 years old. Without bringing the plight of these children to the public and government changes would not have been made and children would have continued working in back-breaking jobs and never gotten a chance to go to school or just be a kid.