civilized ku # 199 ~ documenting the face of America
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 09:07AM 
They live among us • click to embiggenLast evening I caught the PBS program, Documenting The Face of America: Roy Stryker and the FSA/OWI Photographers. It's not new - it's been around since last August but it was my first viewing.
Despite the program's shortcomings photography-wise - why do producers who are making a piece about photographers / photography insist on panning / zooming across / in and out of still pictures, a technique which totally changes our perception of them? - one has to be impressed with the enormous scope and monumental results that the New Deal-sponsored photographers accomplished under the direction and protection (many in political circles tried again and again to kill the project and even attempted to destroy the negatives/prints) of Roy Stryker.
The ranks of FSA photographers were filled with the names of many legendary giants of American photography - Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks, and Jack Delano to name a few. The pictures that they produced were powerfully instrumental in bringing to the fore both a truth and a reality about life in these here United States, Great Depression era-wise.
The pictures dealt with everyday real life with particular attention to race and poverty. This attention, which made many Americans uneasy, might be labeled in today's world as inconvenient truths - those things that Americans in particular kinda sorta know about but would rather not think about - much less do anything about. What the pictures that the FSA photographers made accomplished was to make perfectly clear a reality that many did not know about, that many who did didn't want to think about, and that many who did wanted to do nothing about - you know the ones, the free-marketeers who wanted government to keep their hands off the free market and let it work things out.
Now all of this got me thinking that what America desperately needs now is a reincarnation of the FSA photography project. There are way too many inconvenient truths out there in the real everyday life of Americans that no one wants to know about, think about, or do anything about.
Case in point, healthcare reform.
I have been trying to find pictures (but having no luck) of what has come to be known as "healthcare expeditions" - large-scale free healthcare "events" held around the US of A where tens of thousands of Americans without access to healthcare (provided by volunteers) stand in lines for hours on end (bringing lunch and folding chairs is recommended), sometimes overnight, to receive one sort of healthcare or another.
According to Wendell Potter - former health insurance insider turned healthcare reform advocate - one such expedition which he visited in his home state of Tennessee:
It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls.
Let me repeat that for the benefit of those who would rather not know/think about it - Americans, who live in the richest nation on earth, standing in the rain to get healthcare in animal stalls. To be accurate, volunteers had cleaned the stalls prior to the event, but, nevertheless, Americans (who live in the richest nation on earth) standing in the rain to get healthcare in animal stalls.
This, ladies and germs, is an all-too-common 'event' in the hellthcare system that the private healthcare insurance providers, their townhall meeting hacks, and their paid political and media brethren are telling us is basically "OK" - just keep your hands off and let the market get it right. Don't touch it or you'll screw it up.
And just in case you don't buy into that solution / reform, don't forget that you too - or your aging parents, or your ill siblings and/or children - will one day have to stand in front of a socialist Obama "death panel" to determine whether you have enough individual worth to receive healthcare. If not, you die like the miserable uninsured swine that you obviously are.
Without a doubt, the healthcare mess is a thorny and difficult issue to address, but I would like to suggest a simple approach - much like my approach to the polluted fish problem in my neck of the woods, I would like to see pictures of health insurance execs, apologists, and hucksters of all stripes standing in line, in the rain, at fairgrounds, waiting to have their teeth (all of them) extracted in an animal stall.
Of course, that ain't gonna happen but I do want to see pictures of the reality of Americans getting their hellthcare at a "healthcare expedition" - a truth and reality that Americans need to wake up to.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: Paul Lester wrote: "...if I read this correctly," (re: my quote from Wendell Potter about the healthcare expedition in Tennessee) "you have never seen this, nor can you find photos to support it. However, you seem to make it a statement of fact ... I think that you are shouting your opinion as fact, when you have nothing to back it up. Everything that you have is hearsay. Is it not?
my response: I did get one part of the story wrong - Potter was visiting family in Tennessee when he heard about the healthcare expedition in nearby Wise, Virginia. It was at that location that he witnessed what he saw.
This fact was made clear to me when I did more research about the event and I came across this and this - you can watch the video to hear Potter's account or read the video transcript for the same info.
I also found 1 picture of the event on the RAM website. The picture is from the 2006 event - it's an annual event - and I don't know if this is the year that Potter witnessed. However, it is very clear that the event was (and continues to be) held at a fairgrounds. BTW, in 2006 there were 7917 patient visits at the expedition.
Now, to Paul's point re: "hearsay" and "nothing to back it up" - if you wish to call Wendell Potter, who witnessed the event, a liar then I guess his account is hearsay.
If you wish to believe that the photo of the event does not depict a healthcare expedition because you can not actually see healthcare being administered so, therefore, it could be nothing more than a county fair ... well ... I don't actually know what to say other than to ask - are you from
Missouri, AKA - the show-me state?
Is nothing real for you unless you personally witness it? Is RAM real or don't they exist because you haven't personally witnessed their expeditions?
It seems that by Paul's standard / burden of proof, nothing is unless he sees it with his own eyes. That may, in fact, be overstating the case but it is, in fact, the basis of his critique regarding the Wendell Potter quote in my entry.
FYI and BTW, this response is not an Ad Hominem attack on Paul Lester - it is merely my opinion on his belief that there is no such thing as objective reality.
And, a suggestion for Paul, maybe a trip to Wise, Virginia is in order. You could bear witness to the fairgrounds status as a fairground. Then, next year, might I suggest another trip to Wise during the annual RAM healthcare expedition where you could bear witness to actual medical services being administered to actual people.
Maybe then Paul could get by his own personal "filters" and actually believe that this really IS happening in America.
gravitas et nugalis
A little more research turned up these pictures and these pictures and this story.
Reader Comments (11)
August 11-18 at the Forum in LA - go for it, you west coasters.
We have been fortunate in having good health. However, in Sept 2007, our daughter was hospitalized for a week, including 3 days in the ICU, for what was never diagnosed. We had good insurance which paid most of our costs. What outraged me was a detail I might have overlooked. In reviewing my notice from BC/BS on payment to the hospital (not doctors, labs, etc, just the hosptital) the bill was about $124,000. My insurer paid just $29,000 to settle the bill IN FULL.
That math is just so screwed up, its no wonder health care is a mess.
At least Americans are willing to die for their free market religion. Better dead than red, right? Best wishes from socialistic Norway. We might not have Wall Street over here, but at least we can live a long healthy life in envy. (And before anyone reach for their blood preassure pills, the above text is intended as satire).
This is my all time favorite shot of yours (so far) Mark. Looks like it came straight out of Sternfeld's American Perspectives... and hopefully you will take that as a compliment.....Craig
Yeah, can you imagine that, if along side Obama's soaring rhetoric at these town hall gatherings, there were jumbotron-sized images of that RAM event in Los Angeles? People need visuals. They don't listen very well or for very long these days.
As usual, politics has framed and polluted the entire health care debate. What is really sad is that many people on Medicare are vocal
opponents of "socialized medicine" not having a clue as to the government's role in the program.
A good writeup, Mark. However, I could challenge you on one point. You stated that:
"Let me repeat that for the benefit of those who would rather not know/think about it - Americans, who live in the richest nation on earth, standing in the rain to get healthcare in animal stalls. To be accurate, volunteers had cleaned the stalls prior to the event, but, nevertheless, Americans (who live in the richest nation on earth) standing in the rain to get healthcare in animal stalls."
Yet, if I read this correctly, you have never seen this, nor can you find photos to support it. However, you seem to make it a statement of fact.
I would certainly say that our health care needs to be reformed, though I would doubt that the private insurance lobbyists would allow that to happen, but here I think that you are shouting your opinion as fact, when you have nothing to back it up. Everything that you have is hearsay. Is it not?
Excellent rebuttal, but it proves nothing! Yes, it is still hearsay. Yes. I need more proof than you because you've already made up your mind and it's what you believe so the burden of proof for you is a simple statement or an ambiguous photo.
I never said that Wendell Potter was a liar, that is simply hyperbole on your part. I've never met the man. I sincerely hope that he is out to do good rather than push his personal/party agenda; however, just because his name is Wendell Potter, whoever that is, it doesn't mean that he cannot lie or stretch the facts to get his point across.
If you want to believe, by all means, believe, but I will need a bit more proof and, yes, seeing it for myself is pretty good proof. Also, seeing more detailed photos would be go a long way as well. This mission of his will not survive or fail because I don't believe in it.
I'm sure that there are some shortfalls in many rural communities where access to immediate health care is limited because of the poorness of the town, county, or, in the case of West Virginia, possibly the whole state. This could even be the case with health care reform. It doesn't bring the hospital closer. Also, there are hospitals that take uninsured folks.
And no, there is no such thing as objective reality and that is the 'truth'! You can believe it, because you heard it from me! I'm from Ohio!!! :-)
As a small business owner who cares about providing quality health insurance to employees, as a person who looks closely at the cost of health insurance for public employees (a huge health cost that is left out of the debate, but who pays for the health insurance of the school bus drivers and the teachers and the social workers? the government via taxes - this is also public health insurance, well deserved and well earned, but a huge cost in our tax bill and our economy), as a sister of someone who has bought health insurance on the private market for decades and can no longer afford it, as the parent of a 22 year old who graduated from college, and is off the family heath insurance, as someone who knows a number of young men and women who are out of education because of medical problems, and are therefor without insurance, as a person who knows how rural medicine works, who knows when and how hospitals take uninsured folks and who pays for it, i am pissed off that a well educated populace is allowing itself to buy the line of bull that we don't need health care reform in this country.
If you like your health insurance, guess what, your employer won't be able to keep it where it is for long, it will erode a little bit every year, the person who decides what to chose will face choices between low co-pays for doctor visits and the ability to chose doctors if you face a medical crisis, and your policy dies the death of a thousand cuts, if you are lucky enough to keep your job. I know someone who left her employer's health insurance, which looked pretty good until a family member got sick, and moved to Walmart's employee health insurance because it was better.
There are 6 million stories in this country of people without access to medical care. If you read this blog, you are probably not one of them, right now. But think about it - how far away are you?
Just a few more links, Paul.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/free-medical-clinic-at-forum-reached-full-capacity-for-second-day.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111066576
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111039701
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9JmEHsCv4c
If you still can't believe that this is going on in the greatest Country on the planet, you are delusional.
I have never been to outer space, yet I believe, objectively, that the Earth is a sphere. I have only seen video and photos of this sphere, but I still know that it is indeed a sphere.
Your argument that it takes seeing something with your own eyes, is ridiculous and deserves ridicule. I hope that you are a young guy who is just starting out on his life's quest and that as you gain more knowledge, if you choose to try, that you will see objective truth is all around you. The genius of the scientific method, is that truths, ferreted out hold to be true no matter where are when an experiment takes place.
2+2=4. I'm from Pennsylvania and I know that is true, objectively, in Ohio. :o(/)
Somthin From Nuffin
I would think that especially with a web savvy and web friendly administration this would have real power. Wouldn't it be great it photographer access could somehow be worked into the clean air or water act. 'Sure, you can destroy this mountain to get the coal, but you have to let so-and-so photographer take pictures the entire time.' I wonder if that would help stop mountain top removal? I wonder if people would even care?