At the Time of the Louisville Flood

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At the Time of the Louisville Flood (1937) At the Time of the Louisville Flood.jpg
At the Time of the Louisville Flood (1937)

At the Time of the Louisville Flood, also popularly known as World's Highest Standard of Living, is a black and white photograph taken between January and February 1937 by photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White was on assignment for Life magazine covering the aftermath of the Ohio River flood, which left seventy percent of the city of Louisville underwater. The photo shows Black flood refugees waiting in line for Red Cross relief with a billboard advertisement for the National Association of Manufacturers in the background that reads "World's Highest Standard of Living: There's No Way Like the American Way". [1]

Contents

The image was published in Life magazine on February 15, 1937 – the second in Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series, which had begun a week earlier. The photo is generally categorized as an example of photojournalism, and later became viewed as documentary photography. It is one of four photos of the Red Cross relief line taken from different angles, and one of more than 20 flood-related images Bourke-White took in January and February 1937, eight of which were published by Life magazine. The photo is often recontextualized and used as a symbol of the Great Depression even though it was originally intended to document the Louisville Flood; the photo lacks visual cues about its location and subject, and awareness of its context was lost over time. It is among Bourke-White's most well-known photographs.

Background

Bourke-White's first love was herpetology, which she had intended on studying since she was a child. She attended classes at five different universities, studying photography with Clarence White at Columbia while also pursuing herpetology under Alexander Ruthven at U-M. She started her own small photography business, which almost led her to abandon the profession altogether. [2] After receiving her bachelor's degree in biology from Cornell in 1927, she began using the name "Bourke-White" and moved to Cleveland, establishing a studio to service the architectural and industrial community. By 1928, at the age of 24, Bourke-White was making a name for herself with images of the Otis Steel Company. American magazine magnate Henry Luce came calling for her a year later, recruiting her to the new Fortune magazine as a photojournalist. [2]

Niagara Falls Power, Cleveland (1928) Niagara Falls Power, Cleveland, 1928.png
Niagara Falls Power, Cleveland (1928)

In the 1930s, most Americans got their news from radio, newspapers and magazines. Television began broadcasting in the United States in 1928, but the Great Depression and World War II slowed its development and mass adoption until the 1950s. [3] Up to that point, Bourke-White was known for her commercial work in architectural and industrial photography, serving mostly corporate clients. [4] Her interest in documentary photography slowly grew in her new role as a photographer for Fortune. She became the first American photographer granted access to the Soviet Union, visiting the country three times on assignment to cover its growing industrialization. During those trips, she photographed workers and peasants alongside the Russian infrastructure. [1] In 1934, she produced a photo essay on the Dust Bowl, focusing more on people rather than industry for the first time. The experience covering the Dust Bowl changed her and her future approach to photography: [5]

I had never seen people caught helpless like this in total tragedy. They had no defense. They had no plan...I was deeply moved by the suffering I saw and touched particularly by the bewilderment of the farmers. I think this was the beginning of my awareness of people in a human, sympathetic sense as subject for the camera...

In early 1936, Bourke-White began a collaboration with Erskine Caldwell to produce what eventually became You Have Seen Their Faces the next year, a project which documented poverty in the American South. [5] By late 1936, she was hired as the first woman photojournalist [1] and staff photographer for the newly formed Life magazine, along with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Peter Stackpole, and Thomas McAvoy. Her photo of Fort Peck Dam appeared on the cover of the first issue. [6]

Ohio River flood of 1937

Louisville, January 27, 1937 (Courier-Journal) Great Flood of 1937 Courier-Journal.png
Louisville, January 27, 1937 ( Courier-Journal )

The Ohio River flooded in late January 1937 after heavy rain earlier in the month, causing damage along the river and smaller tributaries. Temperatures were cold enough that ice was reported floating along northern portions of the river. Five states were impacted: West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, with a total of one million left homeless by the flooding. [7] The flood destroyed more than half of the city of Louisville, Kentucky, putting seventy percent of the city under water and forcing 175,000 residents out of their homes. The West End and downtown were submerged under 10 feet (3.05 m) of water. The river crested at approximately 52.15 feet (15.89 m) on January 27, and the water was still receding in February. [8] Flood damage was estimated at $250 million ($5.47 billion in 2024). According to the American Red Cross, it was the greatest natural disaster in the organization's history up to that point. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) contacted the United States Coast Guard for help, with reports that Black residents were facing discrimination when it came to flood rescues. [9]

On assignment

The Ohio River flood was still breaking news when Bourke-White finished up covering the second inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. Life editor Shaw Billings gave Bourke-White an hour to figure out how to get down to Louisville and cover the story. She boarded the final flight and landed in Louisville just before the airfield was submerged. She then hitchhiked by raft into town, taking several photos along the way. [10] Later, in 1963, Bourke-White recalled: "I thumbed rides in rowboats and once on a large raft. These makeshift craft were bringing food packages and bottles of clean drinking water to marooned families and seeking out survivors. Working from the rowboats gave me good opportunities to record acts of mercy as they occurred." [11]

Louisville Central Station surrounded by flood water (Caufield & Shook) Central Station (Louisvile, Kentucky).jpg
Louisville Central Station surrounded by flood water (Caufield & Shook)

The Courier Journal in downtown Louisville became a base of operations for the press, and Bourke-White used their offices both to sleep and to document the efforts of journalists covering the flood. [11] Throughout her assignment, she was guided by Kentucky native Corwin Short, who was also a photographer. [12] Short took photos of Bourke-White on her assignment, documenting her work along the way. In one photo, Bourke-White and her camera and tripod are poised on the roof of a car amidst the flood below. Other photos in Short's series show Bourke-White walking along a pontoon bridge and in a rowboat. [13]

Original publication

The first photos and coverage of the Ohio River flood published by Life appeared in the February 1, 1937, edition, [14] but Bourke-White was not the photographer, as she was still on assignment at the inauguration of FDR in Washington, with one of her photos of the event in the same edition. [11] Her own series of flood photos was first published in the February 8 issue. [15] This was followed the next week with a series of photos in the February 15 issue. [16] At the Time of the Louisville Flood [17] first appears as a work of photojournalism in the February 15 edition of Life (Volume 2, Number 7) on page nine, in a story titled "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line". The photo was accompanied by a description of the overall scene on page nine, with two pages of additional photos showing flood victims and the staff of both the Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times working to cover the story. [18] In that issue, Bourke-White reported on both the flooding of the Ohio River and the new Supreme Court building. [19]

Description

The same advertisement shown to scale on a billboard in Birmingham, Alabama (Arthur Rothstein, 1937) Sign, Birmingham, Alabama, 8a08317.jpg
The same advertisement shown to scale on a billboard in Birmingham, Alabama (Arthur Rothstein, 1937)

The image depicts the aftermath of the 1937 Ohio River flood in Kentucky, showing residents from Black neighborhoods in Louisville, [α] including men, women, and children, waiting in line carrying baskets and pails to receive water, food and medicine from the Red Cross. [16] They are shown standing in front of a billboard that features an advertisement from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) [7] depicting a happy white, middle-class family composed of a husband, wife, two children, and a dog driving through the country. Of the 18 people in line seeking flood relief, only one is staring at the billboard. The words, "World's Highest Standard of Living" appear plastered across the top of the billboard, while down below, to the right of the man driving the car, smaller words appear that say, "There's No Way Like the American Way!" [20]

Analysis

Design theorist Clive Dilnot argues that the framing and composition of the photo is simple, but deliberate in its contrasts of "black/white, rich/poor, reality/illusion". There are multiple levels of interpretation here, writes Dilnot. For one, there is the very real, documentary aspect of the photo, the reality of the event itself. On the other hand, there is the glaring contrast between what the poster on the billboard is communicating to the viewer, and the contradiction that manifests itself in the line of people seeking relief, contrasts that Dilnot believes alters the reference point of the viewer from the Louisville Flood and relief efforts itself to economic concerns of the Great Depression of 1937 and the divisions and contrasts it entails, those between blacks and whites, and between "wealth and poverty". The photo serves to remind the viewer, writes Dilnot, that the racial divide is also an economic one. [20]

Philosopher Barbara E. Savedoff explores the same ideas as Dilnot noting that "Bourke-White exposes the gap between propaganda and reality, between black and white, between those who enjoy the 'world's highest standard of living,' and the vulnerability of those suffering in need." [21] Savedoff also emphasizes the documentary nature of the image; Bourke-White captured this scene as the line of people passed in front of the billboard. It is real, as it was neither constructed nor artificial. She wonders if the image will have the same impact in the future, as the rise of computer-based tools alters the assumptions and expectations of the audience. Savedoff poses the question: "[As] we become accustomed to seamless assemblages and montages, might we become less able to appreciate the profundity, the powerful testimony, of the straight image?" [21]

Bread line, 1931 (Unknown) Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 02-1931 - NARA - 541927.jpg
Bread line, 1931 (Unknown)

Literary critic Donald Pizer explores the history of the bread line depicted in At the Time of the Louisville Flood. The photo was first published by Life with the title "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line". [18] Pizer notes that the image of the bread line in America has a longer history, first arising after the Panic of 1893 towards the end of the Gilded Age, but acquiring an association with the Great Depression many decades later. Americans waiting in bread lines at Depression-era soup kitchens became one of the defining images of the 1930s. The image appeared everywhere in the media at the time, but usually anonymously, with no photo credit attached. Some photographers like Edward Steichen (Breadline on Sixth Avenue, c. 1930) and Dorothea Lange (White Angel Bread Line, 1933) received credit and became known for their bread line photos. Pizer argues that Bourke-White's depiction of the bread line follows in the longer tradition of its use as an "American icon of poverty", but differs from its original meaning in the 1890s, when it was largely seen as a form of class conflict. Here, Pizer writes, Bourke-White's bread line becomes a symbol of "social disparity" in terms of "racial dimensions". [22]

Art historian Theodore M. Brown describes how the photo of At the Time of the Louisville Flood was recontextualized over time. [β] Brown acknowledges that the photo depicts members of a lower income Black neighborhood in Louisville that was hit hard by the floods, but also points out that it does not show "unemployment or welfare, or the kind of chronic poverty" that was documented by the government during the Great Depression or by Bourke-White in the Southern United States. In spite of these differences, the photo instead, writes Brown, is "used repeatedly to comment on inequality, poverty and deprivation". [18] Brown refers to the image as "probably her most famous individual photograph". [17]

Art historian John A. Walker explored Brown's idea of recontextualization, arguing that the photo took on additional interpretations and meaning once it was removed from the original context of the Life magazine article about the flood. "Since the photograph itself makes no reference to a flood or to Louisville", writes Walker, "only those featured in the photograph, or who helped to produce it, or who read the article in Life would be aware of its specific spatio-temporal point of origin." [18]

Use by Goebbels

Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made use of the photograph in Nazi propaganda, publishing the photo in 1937 with the caption, "Thank God, we have a better way." [17]

Series

Flood damage in the Louisville railroad yard (TVA) C. & O. railroad yard damaged by flood - NARA - 279796.jpg
Flood damage in the Louisville railroad yard (TVA)

There are more than 20 known photos in Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series. Of the entire series, only eight photos were originally published by Life in 1937, with approximately 13 or more left unpublished. Additional photos taken by Corwin Short of Bourke-White in the field during the original assignment for Life were published, exhibited, and donated to the University of Louisville in the 2010s. [25]

Red Cross relief station sub-series

At the Time of the Louisville Flood is part of a sub-series within the larger Louisville Flood series consisting of at least four known photos of the same scene from different angles and perspectives. This sub-series includes At the Time of the Louisville Flood, [16] Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, [26] Untitled (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, II), [7] and Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y. [27] At the Time of the Louisville Flood is the only published image in the sub-series. [16]

Two of the unpublished photos in the series reveal the line of people receding towards the back into the distance down the street, while the other two do not, constraining the frame to show either 18 (At the Time of the Louisville Flood) [16] or 21 people waiting in line (Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.). [27] Bourke-White's reframing of the shot in the other two images (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville I and II) shows the line of people becoming much longer in both directions, expanding towards the right foreground of the frame where it disappears inside a building that houses the relief center, and also into the far distance to the left in the background, showing that the line of people disappears around and down the corner of the street, visibly emerging after some distance as the winding line of people appears in the frame once again off to the side in the background. Curator Brian Piper of the New Orleans Museum of Art notes that unlike the original published version, more information is provided about the famous scene with this additional image, as, according to Piper, the "camera's vantage in this version [Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville] gives a sense of perspective and lets us know just how long the queue of displaced people extended down the street." [26]

A fourth photo in the sub-series, Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y., [γ] is taken towards the line of people from the side instead of away from it, and from a lower angle. [27]

† indicates a photo in the Red Cross relief station sub-series. The unpublished list is incomplete.

Published
  1. Baby in Shelter During Flood, Louisville, Kentucky (Life, February 8) [28]
  2. At the Time of the Louisville Flood (Life, February 15)† [7]
  3. Untitled (Staffs of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times) (Life, February 15) [7]
  4. Untitled (Tom Wallace) (Life, February 15) [16]
  5. Untitled (Wilbur Cogshall) (Life, February 15) [7]
  6. Untitled (St. Paul's Episcopal Church) (Life, February 15) [7]
  7. Untitled (Jim Lawhorn) (Life, February 15) [29]
  8. Untitled (Women and Babies at Churchill Downs) (Life, February 15) [16]

Unpublished

  1. Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, I (Unpub.)† [30]
  2. Untitled (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, II) (Unpub.)† [7]
  3. Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y. (Unpub.)† [27]
  4. Untitled (No Food Will Be Served Unless You Have A Food Check) (Unpub.) [7]
  5. Untitled (Twenty Grand Cigarettes) (Unpub.) [7]
  6. Untitled (Man Navigating the Flood on a Makeshift Raft) (Unpub.) [7]
  7. Untitled (Clara Stull) (Unpub.) [7]
  8. Untitled (Ohio River Flood) (Unpub.) [7]
  9. Untitled (Churchill Downs) (Unpub.) [7]
  10. Untitled (Homeless Man) (Unpub.) [7]
  11. Untitled (Flooded Cafe) (Unpub.) [7]
  12. Untitled (Unknown) (Unpub.) [31]
  13. Untitled (Reflection) (Unpub.) [31]
  14. Untitled (White Red Cross relief station) (Unverified) [δ]
  15. Untitled (White Red Cross relief station) (Unverified) [δ]

Exhibitions

Notes

  1. ↑ Walker 2009: "[The] African American quarter was completely swamped - and had to be temporarily assisted by Red Cross relief agencies." [18] Black neighborhoods significantly impacted by the floods included Russell and California. Others impacted include Parkland, and Smoketown.
  2. ↑ There are many examples of the image being used outside its original context of the flood. Fifty-five years after the photo was originally published, the authors of the 1992 book, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern were unaware of its original context, erroneously describing it as showing the "unemployed on a breadline during the Depression". [23] In 2008, during the subprime mortgage crisis phase of the Great Recession, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published an opinion piece by economist Jon Stanford using the photo to lead the article with the title, "A Great Depression crisis". [24]
  3. ↑ A 2020 auction of Bourke-White photos in the Ginny Williams collection indicates that the third unpublished photo, titled at auction as Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y. (1937) was only printed in 2013.
  4. 1 2 In late 2024, two new images attributed to Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series were released online. They appear to be part of the same series and feature White Louisville refugees walking through the flood waters near a Red Cross relief station. They have not been verified.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sexton, Robby (May 7, 2014). "World's Highest Standard of Living". Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
  2. 1 2 Daffron, Carolyn (1988). Margaret Bourke-White. Chelsea House. ISBN   9781555466442. OCLC   16759177.
  3. ↑ Wolf, Sylvia (1994). Focus: Five Women Photographers: Julia Margaret Cameron, Margaret Bourke-White, Flor Garduño, Sandy Skoglund, Lorna Simpson. A. Whitman. ISBN   9780807525319. OCLC   1416271209.
  4. ↑ Corwin, Sharon (2010). "Constructed Documentary". In Corwin, Sharon; May, Jessica; Weissman, Terri (Ed.). American Modern: Documentary Photography by Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN   9780520265622. OCLC   606760541.
  5. 1 2 McDonald, Robert L. (1994). "The Moment of "Three Women Eating": Completing the Story of You Have Seen Their Faces". The Courier. 310. XXIX. Syracuse University Library Associates. pp. 61-74.
  6. ↑ Hostetler, Lisa (1999). "Biographies". In Ellen Handy and Constance Sullivan (ed). Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection. Little, Brown and Company. International Center of Photography. p. 209. ISBN   9780821226254. OCLC   44651499.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Cosgrove, Ben (March 24, 2014). "Behind the Picture: 'The American Way' and the Flood of '37". Time. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
  8. ↑ Giffin, Connor (March 22, 2023). "How we got here: Louisville’s high-water history and the aging levee system standing guard". Louisville Courier Journal. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
  9. ↑ Havern, Christopher (July 29, 2022). "The Long Blue Line: Ohio River, 1937—Coast Guard’s largest flood response 85 years ago!". United States Coast Guard. Retrieved March 15, 2025.
  10. ↑ Goldberg, Vicki (1986). Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography. Harper & Row. pp. 186-187. ISBN   9780060155131. OCLC   12941857.
  11. 1 2 3 Bourke-White, Margaret (1963). Portrait of Myself. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 147-150. OCLC   630874.
  12. ↑ Corwin, Short. (1937). "105 black and white snapshots of '37 flood taken by Corwin Short (Sr.), include shots of Margaret Bourke-White". Archives & Special Collections, University of Louisville, Louisville.
  13. ↑ Reilly, Elizabeth E. (March 5, 2012). "'37 Flood Exhibit Draws Big Crowds". University of Louisville Libraries News. Retrieved March 15, 2025.
  14. ↑ Life. February 1, 1937. Full version. 2 (5): 16-17. ISSN   0024-3019.
  15. ↑ Life. February 8, 1937. Full version. 2 (6): 9-23. ISSN   0024-3019.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Life. February 15, 1937. Full version. 2 (7): 9-13. ISSN   0024-3019.
  17. 1 2 3 Callahan, Sean (1972). The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White. Boston: New York Graphic Society. pp. 18-19, 135. ISBN   9780821206560. OCLC   2366234.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 Walker, John A. (May 1978). "Reflections on a photograph by Margaret Bourke-White". Creative Camera . 167. ISSN   0011-0876.
  19. ↑ Tagg, John (2009). "Melancholy Reasoning: Walker Evans's Resistance to Meaning". The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning. University of Minnesota Press. p. 298, fn 35. ISBN   9780816666225. OCLC   318218237.
  20. 1 2 Dilnot, Clive (2010). "Being prescient concerning Obama, or Notes on the politics of configuration (part one)". The Poster: A Critical Journal of Design. 1 (1): 7-29.
  21. 1 2 Savedoff, Barbara (2008). "Documentary authority and the art of photography". In Walden, Scott (ed.). Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature. Blackwell. pp. 111-137. ISBN   9781444335088. OCLC   656563594.
  22. ↑ Pizer, Donald (2007). "The Bread Line: An American Icon of Hard Times". Studies in American Naturalism. University of Nebraska Press. 2 (2): 103–28. (subscription required)
  23. ↑ Strickland, Carol; Boswell, John (1992). The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. p. 184. ISBN   9781449482138. OCLC   1022731024, 102273102.
  24. ↑ Stanford, Jon (16 March 2008). "A Great Depression crisis". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
  25. ↑ "Photographic Archives commemorates 1937 Ohio River flood". University of Louisville. January 20, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2025.
  26. 1 2 Piper, Brian (April 17, 2020). "Object Lesson: Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville by Margaret Bourke-White". New Orleans Museum of Art. Retrieved May 31, 2025.
  27. 1 2 3 4 Taylor, Alan (August 28, 2019). "The Photography of Margaret Bourke-White". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 30, 2025.
  28. ↑ Bourke-White, Margaret (1937). Baby in shelter during flood, Louisville, Kentucky. Accession: 65.568. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
  29. ↑ Welky, David (2011). The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937. University of Chicago Press. p. 220. ISBN   9780226887166. OCLC   711050931.
  30. ↑ Bourke-White, Margaret (1937). Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville. Accession: 79.33. New Orleans Museum of Art. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
  31. 1 2 "The Louisville Flood of '37". Time. 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2025.
  32. ↑ "The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art announces a new exhibition: Work and Society in the 1930s". Iowa News Now. KGAN. May 25, 2023. Retrieved June 6, 2025.
  33. ↑ Nelson, Andrea (2020). The New Woman Behind the Camera. National Gallery of Art. ISBN   9781942884743. OCLC   1159551159.
  34. ↑ Goldberg, Vicki (1988). Bourke-White. United Technologies Corporation. OCLC   20522212.
  35. ↑ Brown, Theodore M. (1972). Margaret Bourke-White: Photojournalist. Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art. Cornell University. OCLC   394056
  36. ↑ Photography 1839–1937. Catalog. Museum of Modern Art. 1937. OCLC   1033232.

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