“Huddled Masses: Some American Groups in Photographs, selected by W.M. Hunt”
FORMAT 2021, Derby, UK
These vintage photographic images all made before 1950 present visual reports — histories; however, we can only guess at the occasion for most of these photos. “Huddled Masses” offer very little real information as to the who, what, where, and when of the events captured, unless there are notations in the negative.
Nonetheless they pulse with life.
Americans know how to be in photographs — to crowd in, to hold still and, if directed, to smile. There are neat rows sometimes, and other times, there are tangled gangs of people.
Here are some synonyms that make for a word picture of “huddled masses”: hoi polloi, commons, rank and file, the many, riffraff, Joe Public, pleb, tag rag and bobtail, Main Street, vulgar herd, and plain folks.
The phrase “Huddled Masses” comes from the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, and it celebrates immigration and the State of Liberty in a rather loud and grand manner. It’s over the top, highfalutin. These photographs are not. These have immediacy and suggest an infinite range of remarkable stories of America at work and at play, in war and in peace.
They’re uniquely American, like jazz; they’re musical, even looking like lines of printed music with the notes like faces in the crowds.
The strength of the these images is their generosity, their limitless rambunctious spirit. Often there are so very many people in the frame, it seems too many to count.
Some of the pictures have a feeling of “yearning to breathe free”. They want to be “double enders”, panoramic photographs made with the Cirkut camera which rotated slowly enough that individuals standing on the left of the frame could run around behind the camera and be seen on the right side.
These are American originals.
“The New Colossus” was written in the 1880’s when Mr. Hunt’s great-grandparents Harry Moseley Stevens and Mary Wragge Stevens emigrated from Derby to the US. This show is dedicated to them.
©2020