Photograph of Greenbelt, Maryland
Lewis Mumford’s The City compares the dangers of living in the city to the idyllic version of living in the Greenbelt towns. The Greenbelt towns were planned communities designed out of the government’s New Deal programming around 1936. There were three communities that the government built Greenbelt, Maryland, Greendale, Wisconsin, and Greenhills, Ohio. In the beginning of the excerpt of The City we see the over crowded dangerous car filled streets of the city. Out of nowhere the scene shifts to an emptied city, no people no cars. The scene then shifts to roads that seem to be headed out of the city maybe to the country with lots of traffic backed up. There are signs at crosswalks reading, “death lurks at all crossings” and “do not move an injured person till medical aid arrives”. Showing the dangers of the automobile, travel, and the effects both have on pedestrians. There is a car accident, people picnicking next to a busy road, car trouble, and then finally a car tumbling down a hill crumbling to pieces.
From there, we shift to massive infrastructure such as damns and planes. Commentary comes on to discuss how science and technology are allowing the building of better cities ones that are closer to the ground. This science and technology also made machines more automatic and man more human. These new cities were built into the country side and were not meant to get any bigger then their original plan, to prevent from the over crowding we saw earlier in the city part of the film. There was also no need to travel in and out of the city because these Greenbelt towns embodied both city and country, “never pushing the fields to far away.” Mumford’s film clearly states that the city is dangerous and overcrowded, while these new Greenbelt towns where the ideal marriage of both city and country giving you everything you ever wanted. The film seems a biased promotion of the government’s Greenbelt towns that they built in the 1930s. Although photographer Jason Reblando who has photographed all three Greenbelt towns shows that, today they are still as functioning communities.
Jane Livingston writes that despite the numerous movements in photography that took place in the 1920s to the 1950s, (Steieglitz’s pictorialism, the “f64” group in California, the New Bauhaus in Chicago, the picture magazine journalism, and the social documentary work of the 1930s) the New York School of photographers was missed. They were a group of photographers that lived and worked in New York and dismissed the idea of being label as “artists”. Although they were their own movement and group they were still influenced by all of these movements, as well as film noir, and MoMA and its director Alfred Barr Jr. A big part of the beginnings of the New York School was the relationships that had developed between art, commerce, and left leaning politics of the 1930s.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Week 4
Photograph of Greenbelt, Maryland
Lewis Mumford’s The City compares the dangers of living in the city to the idyllic version of living in the Greenbelt towns. The Greenbelt towns were planned communities designed out of the government’s New Deal programming around 1936. There were three communities that the government built Greenbelt, Maryland, Greendale, Wisconsin, and Greenhills, Ohio. In the beginning of the excerpt of The City we see the over crowded dangerous car filled streets of the city. Out of nowhere the scene shifts to an emptied city, no people no cars. The scene then shifts to roads that seem to be headed out of the city maybe to the country with lots of traffic backed up. There are signs at crosswalks reading, “death lurks at all crossings” and “do not move an injured person till medical aid arrives”. Showing the dangers of the automobile, travel, and the effects both have on pedestrians. There is a car accident, people picnicking next to a busy road, car trouble, and then finally a car tumbling down a hill crumbling to pieces.
From there, we shift to massive infrastructure such as damns and planes. Commentary comes on to discuss how science and technology are allowing the building of better cities ones that are closer to the ground. This science and technology also made machines more automatic and man more human. These new cities were built into the country side and were not meant to get any bigger then their original plan, to prevent from the over crowding we saw earlier in the city part of the film. There was also no need to travel in and out of the city because these Greenbelt towns embodied both city and country, “never pushing the fields to far away.” Mumford’s film clearly states that the city is dangerous and overcrowded, while these new Greenbelt towns where the ideal marriage of both city and country giving you everything you ever wanted. The film seems a biased promotion of the government’s Greenbelt towns that they built in the 1930s. Although photographer Jason Reblando who has photographed all three Greenbelt towns shows that, today they are still as functioning communities.
Jane Livingston writes that despite the numerous movements in photography that took place in the 1920s to the 1950s, (Steieglitz’s pictorialism, the “f64” group in California, the New Bauhaus in Chicago, the picture magazine journalism, and the social documentary work of the 1930s) the New York School of photographers was missed. They were a group of photographers that lived and worked in New York and dismissed the idea of being label as “artists”. Although they were their own movement and group they were still influenced by all of these movements, as well as film noir, and MoMA and its director Alfred Barr Jr. A big part of the beginnings of the New York School was the relationships that had developed between art, commerce, and left leaning politics of the 1930s.
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