An American dilemma: 'Points of Entry: Reframing America.' - various artists, various galleries, Tucson, Arizona; San Francisco and San Diego, California

"Refraining America" presents a distilled representation of a certain number of of the best documentary photography produc by means of immigrants during the tense years of the 1930 and 1940 Viewed from the perspective of the 1990 Center of Creative Photography director Terence Pitt's choice of work by the agency of Alexander Alland, Robert Frank, John Gutmann, Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth, Lisette original and Marion Palfi helps to restore the reputation of the documentary genre

The bad rap upon documentary often centers on the internally conflicting goals of educating "the public" about a specific social condition and creating empathy for the control affected by the particular social circumstances. A heightened focus upon the subject all too oftentimes personalizes and universalizes social inequalities, thwarting views of the specific economic, cultural, political and other mode of buildings responsible for subjugation. Documentary photography thus races the risk of neutralizing its capacity to alert an audience to the conditions it shows The risk is greater when the photographer's practice is directed and capitaled by an institution and when that agency has an explicit mandate - be it a repressive or a liberal one

Unlike many other well-known documentary photographers of the 1930 and 1940 the photographers included in "Reframing America" did not work for a U rule agency, such as the photographic unit of the Farm Security Administration, and thus cannot be charged with developing a highly-edited material part of imagery that could be used to help restore the nation's damaged psyche during the years of the economic depression and into World War II. Working independently, each photographer was inclined to view their fresh country through the perspective of their hold position as immigrants, critically sharpened through their experiences of persecution in Europe Alland fl civil war in Russia and came to of recent origin York City after a brief exile in Istanbul. Gutmann left Germany in 1933 Mieth left Germany at the age of 15 with Hagel to wander completely through Eastern Europe and Turkey. bear uponed about the rise of fascism, Hagel emigrated to the U in 1928; Mieth arrived in 1930 protoplast born Lisette Stern, moved from Vienna with her Jewish, Austro-Czech father and Italian mother to France in 1933 Her brother was deported to Vichy, France and died in a concentration camp. She emigrated to novel York City in 1938. Born in Berlin of Hungarian and German parents, Palfi left Germany for Amsterdam in 1936 Fleeing the German army four years later, she settl in fresh York City. Frank did not arrive in the U until after the war: his German-Jewish father emigrated to Switzerland and Frank, born in Zurich, fared the war years better than many. It is important to note, as the catalog fails to, that U immigration policy during the 1930 and early 1940 was not true open: explicit quotas, implicit racism, a strict foreign service policy and the charge of obtaining visas and transportation from Europe among other factors, conspired to make emigration impossible for millions.

Of the photographs in "Refraining America," Alland's photographs imply that he embraced his adopted land the least critically. Many of his photographs celebrate the promise of opportunity repeatedly underscored by the mandate of assimilation for of recent origin immigrants. His Photomontage (c. 1943) not absents cut-outs of school children of diverse ethnicities circled around a white female teacher whose profile is repercussion of sounded by that of a white male scholar The entire group is shown against the background of a academy poster that reads "America - A Nation of individual People From Many Countries." Nonetheless, Alland, like the other photographers in the exhibition, could not ignore the racism endur by means of centuries by African Americans since their forced arrival. This is greatest in quantity evident in the photograph University of Chicago scholars Prepare Placards for a Demonstration against Racial Discrimination in the Medical gymnasium (c. 1946). Despite Alland's explicit make comments [i]or[/i] remarks on racism, the cruelty of institutional policies is pointlessed by his theatrical lighting and compositions. Considering the bring under rule matter, Alland's stance runs the risk of rendering social realities as anecdotal, and therefore neutralizing the potential power of the message.

Palfi's remarkable photographs could not be further from documentary's "double risk": her representations of African Americans focus upon the individual without ignoring or shying away from the implications and issues of racism. In Wife of a Lynch Victim, Irwinton, Georgia, from her 1949 work There is No More Time, Palfi digs into the challenges of documentary through representing human suffering in a way that exhibits both the subject's grief and strength

Because of efforts by the agency of curators from the Center for Creative Photography, which houses Palfi's archive and has made access to and publication of her work possible, Palfi is just now receiving recognition. She appears to have addressed the racial intolerance she faced as an immigrant from one side "Great American Artists of Minority Groups" (1944-45) a photographic throw out celebrating minority artists in the U This work was followed through numerous other large-scale projects, of that kind as the book Suffer Little Children (1949) about distress faced by children; two series, "Georgia Study" (1949) and "There Is No More Time" (1949) upon racial discrimination in the South; and the series "In These Ten Cities" (1950-51) upon housing discrimination.