1RA+Rough


 * Peer Review by Rachael Ward**


 * 1)** Does the writer understand the concept of a rhetorical analysis and does the paper demonstrate its application? Why or why not. Give suggestions.
 * Yes it does demonstrate it very well. Though the beginning doesn't really explain why these pictures were chosen for this analysis, the background of the time they were taken is explained and the writer draws the information read in class effectively. Though only two pictures are used, the writer is able to use them and what they contain in an efficient manner that I could follow throughout the paper.**


 * 2)** What argument / communicative purpose does the paper describe for the photographs it uses. Is it appropriate? Effectively presented? Why or why not. Give suggestions.


 * From what I could gather, the point or trend in the photos is the photographer's portrayal of the "American Dream" and how it was viewed in the time period it was taken. While the second picture definelty gets this point across, I'm not entirely sure about the connection with the image of the young girl. Though I liked the points that you made, there are a few more things in the photo that could help your argument even more. Such as the fact the child's social status is relatively ambiguous, and that she seems to have been crying prior to her photo being taken. Its also important to note that even if the photographer didn't really want to show these images to other people, what was it about her life that made her need to take them and hide them away. If you can't find any information on this, thats fine. It would just make a lot more sense to me.**


 * 3)**

What is the argument claim put forward for the photograph(s) under analysis in the paper? Is it appropriate? Effectively presented? Why or why not. Give suggestions.

 * That each of the two photos represent a different aspect of the "American Dream" It is definetly appropriate and for the most part, explain very well, save for the issues mentioned in the previous question. It would just help if you explained why this discovery of her photos is so important or why people like them so much. What is it about them that you liked?**


 * 4)** What did you like about how the various visual/rhetorical theorists (Berger/Faigley/Ramage/Blakesly&Brooke/Barthes) were used in the paper? What could be improved about how the paper uses these theorists? What suggestions do you have for the writer? Be as specific as possible by discussing each theorist one at a time and how the paper uses them. Also, give suggestions of theorists that the writer does not use but might be useful in his/her rhetorical analysis.
 * I enjoyed the fact that you seemed to focus your analysis on a specific point such as metaphor and identification. Yet I think you could have added a bit more with Berger's article on the perception of photography and art. Since that has certainly happened with this photographer and her work. You could add a whole other layer to this analysis if you discuss on whether or not Majer's work should be considered art or not or if it was right to show off these images without her permission.**

Kelsey Shapiro Visual Rhetoric MW 4:00 1RA Rough


 * (Images at the Bottom)**

From 1951 until the late 90’s, Vivian Maier spent her days wandering the streets of ‍‍‍whatever city ‍‍‍ she was in documenting life with her camera. Though she took photographs obsessively, she was an incredibly private woman and never showed anybody her work; Maier even only developed some pictures, ‍‍‍‍amassing instead over 100,000 negatives ‍‍‍‍. Her body of work would have remained unseen if a storage locker containing an assorted collection of negatives hadn’t been bought at an auction by John Maloof, for whom the collection of Maier photographs are named. What has been developed and presented in this collection shows an almost encyclopedic catalog of people and life in the places she lived and visited.

Maier was born in New York City, but spent her life traveling between France and America, returning to her city of birth for a time in 1951. Settling in New York City, she made a life for herself by nannying. Little is known about her life outside of this other than that she was a ‍‍‍very introverted woman ‍‍‍ who spent most of her free time alone, wandering the streets of the city taking pictures. After living in New York for a few years she moved to Chicago where she continued nannying and photographing in the city there. Maier managed to find some time to travel as well, and spent time in places such as Egypt and Beijing.

In America during the 1950’s-90’s when Maier was photographing, many things were happening. When Maier came to New York City,‍‍‍ it was in a state of great growth; the war had ended a few years earlier, and businesses and individuals alike were returning to the ways of peacetime consumerism. Class became incredibly mobile and an expanding upper-middle class grew as jobs yielded better salaries and families found themselves with more financial freedom. ‍‍‍ Maier was no different, making her way from a sweat shop and a seedy apartment to nannying living with families uptown. America at this time was embracing a new post-war ‘American Dream’ emphasizing the success of hard work and the self made American, the embodiment of a comfortable upper-middle class life style in a proud and industrialized society.

‍‍‍‍Maier spent her life photographing many things, among them visions of this ‘American Dream’ ideal on the streets of the city. As she got older, Maier became ‍‍‍somewhat of a hermit ‍‍‍and lived in an apartment paid for by the now-adult children she had nannied in Chicago. She hoarded boxes of her negatives, such as the one Maloof purchased at auction. Though Maier never intended for her work to be seen by the public, it has relevance to many and deserves to be seen. Maier’s photographs tell the story of the lower class transcending into prosperity and the creation of an American ideal of successful upper-middle class. The people and themes in her images transcend time and are relevant a half century later in the era of ‘McMansions’ and the popular suburban lifestyle. ‍‍‍‍

Two photographs from the Maloof collection can be used to exemplify this trend in Maier’s work. The first image in the set is “Undated, New York, NY”. Maier did not title her works, instead she kept an inconsistent record on the negatives of the date and location of the photograph. While this image has no date, Maier spent time in New York only for a few years from ’51 to ’56, so this was likely taken within those five years. The image mainly consists of a young girl, standing in front of a window display. The girl’s skin is dirty and she wears a watch; as she stands she poses with her arms crossed and a blank expression on her face that looks slightly above the audience. The window display in the background is made up of women’s gloves marked with labels that are unreadable due to the focus of the camera on the girl.

Maier sets up the image as a portrait by focusing on the girl and creating framing with the base of the window and the gloves as a backdrop. Portraits have been used for centuries as a way to glorify a person and signify wealth, starting out as paintings and progressing to photographs as technology improved and cameras became less expensive. While now portraits don’t necessarily signify wealth, they do retain the idea of importance; portrait style pictures are taken at big event type moments in life, such as graduations and weddings. In society today these images are often given out to family or friends as tokens of remembrance, and these portraits are seen as our best representations of ourselves. In the case of the image of the girl, she did not know her picture would be taken; it was Maier that decided she would take this portrait at that natural time, making it a representation of the girl’s identity that Maier captured as opposed to one being projected by the subject.

‍‍‍‍The girl in the image can be seen a metaphor for the rise of the lower classes in the economy boost after the war. First, the girl’s skin and clothes being dirty portray her as poor or from a lower class. ‍‍‍‍ This connection is drawn from the similarities between this and other images of dirt covered children in poor situations, such as Dorothea Lange’s iconic images from the Great Depression. While her dirtiness could also be viewed as an indicator of her youth, she seems to take on the airs of an older age, with her much more adult stance and facial expression. The expression on her face is very ambiguous, with the mouth in an almost straight line no hint of emotion can be read from her face. ‍‍‍‍Though she is dirty and of questionable economic standing, she still owns a nice looking watch which she wears on her right arm. ‍‍‍‍ Though only one sign, the watch distributes many messages. Most importantly, the watch says something about the identity of the girl and of the culture at the time. ‍‍In Ramage’s classification there are three aspects of identity: the given, the readymade, and the constructed ‍‍. In this case the given can’t be inferred very extensively, other than the girl is a young female. It is the readymade and constructed identities that are more important here. The watch represents a piece of this girl’s constructed identity because ‍‍she chooses to wear it, ‍‍however it also categorizes her as a subscriber of a certain readymade identity. She is attempting to portray the image of someone successful with expensive personal belongings‍‍, a children’s version of the “American Dream” image. ‍‍

The watch can also signify technology and the changes America was experiencing at this time. Though obviously popular before 1950, the watch is similar to other inventions that were becoming popular to make life easier for the emerging upper-middle class. ‍‍The mechanical nature of the watch can also then signify the ‘corporate machine’ that all who wish to prosper and achieve the “American Dream” ideal must adhere to in order to succeed in advancing themselves. ‍‍ The fashion of consumerism at the time is further reinforced by the gloves for sale in the window behind the girl.

‍‍Though her inclination to desire a better future and to be viewed as a success may be based on readymade ideas of the right way to be an American after the war, her attitude says she is not passively accepting these labels but actively embracing them and using them for her own advancement. The girls shows that she is refusing her status and has desires to move up on the social ladder with her defiant arms-crossed stance that also allows her to show off her watch. Her blank gaze signifies a stoic acceptance and commitment to recreating her identity in the mold of the “American Dream”. ‍‍ The upward gaze of the girl can be representational of her hope for the future. In this light, the dirt on her skin can be seen as transformative; it moves from giving the idea of poverty to standing for the dirtiness of doing a hard day’s work. Though taken 20 years later, in a different city, and in color, a second photograph by Maier shares similar elements with the previous. Also ambiguously titled, October 1978 depicts an older man with a neck brace sitting inside of a news stand. Though the city is not given in the title, the textual message given by the the title of the newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, anchors this image in Chicago. The man in the newsstand is wearing an apron and staring intently as if deep in thought, and in the foreground at the front right corner there is a coin newspaper dispenser.

Again Maier sets up her image as a portrait; she includes the foreground details to allow the window of the stand to act as a frame for the man. The nature of the portrait depicts the image of the man as the representation of an ideal. While similar, the man’s iconic message is slightly different than the girl’s; the man in the newsstand represents the struggles to keep up in a fast paced and rapidly growing consumerist society.

‍‍‍‍The man in the image is wearing a neck brace; however he is still at work. This signifies the resilience and persistence of the middle class people like the man shown. He is metaphorically breaking his neck to live by working to feed himself or his family. His heroism is aptly commented on by the nature of the portrait; however his expression is not proud but rather very serious. This reminds the audience of the man’s hardship, the fact that he is at work with such as serious injury. This plays to the audience’s pathos, and the viewer pities this man who is working hard and clearly not making much excess if any. ‍‍‍‍

‍The other important signifier in the image is the coin operated news paper dispenser. The dispenser is brighter than anything else in the image, and its newness makes the stand the man is in look like a run-down shack by contrast. ‍ It exemplifies the speed of progress in our society, and the need to keep up or get run over. To succeed, one must be as technologically up to date as possible, or else be inferior and lose business to the newest and trendiest thing in town. Though less relevant to Maier when taking the image, to the audiences that are seeing this image now, the fact that this man is selling newspapers works to elaborate on the idea of things being outpaced by the next best thing; newspapers are quickly becoming a thing of the past as people receive news on their computers and smart-phones.

Both images represent the cultural attitudes of people from the 1950’s-80’s. Through different sets of related symbols, both images portray exemplars of the reality of the ‘American Dream’. The young girl reminds the audience that even when constructing an individual identity, ideals are projected on us about what identity type we should ascribe to. Post-war patriotic sentiments created resurgence in the idea of the “American Dream”, and post-war economic prosperity provided the opportunity to achieve this ideal. The girl is an example of what comes before the transformation into the “American Dream” and hope for the future; the man in the newsstand shows what happens to those who don’t quite make it into this lifestyle. Though he displays qualities of the “American Dream”, such as hard-work and keeping up with the times, he has not fully achieved this role because he still must tend to his stand with an injury. ‍‍‍‍Maier presents these two images as a documentation of the lives of people living in this time period, and by taking candid portraits she was able to catch America while its back was turned. <range type="comment" id="456762">‍Taking the historical and cultural context into consideration, her images depict the drive of a culture and its orientation towards a perceived ‘American’ identity based on progress and living as part of an almost machine-like system. ‍‍‍‍ ‍

Images taken from the official Vivan Maier website, Vivianmaier.com

"Undated, New York, NY"

"October 1978"

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">1.) I think this paper is an excellent example of a rhetorical analysis. I like how even though not much is known about the author, she could still give an idea of her for the context for her photography. I like how the general context of the times was addressed. I think HOW the pictures would’ve affected people then could be delved into more. I did notice that you compared the effect to people today which was good. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">2.) Her argument in the paper was that these photos represented poor, working class society transitioning into the idyllic American Dream archetype. I think this works only so much as you believe the girl is really poor; or if you think her really rich, why the tears in her eyes and the unhappiness in her face. Perhaps that is part of the contrast: the actuality of the American Dream is far from idyllic, and far from being any fairytale, for children or adults. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">3.) Like #2 I the American Dream in society is presented. I think there could be other interpretations for the two pictures but put in the context you put it in I see your thesis. Perhaps look at them and present them from a different angle. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">4.) I like how you used Ramage’s idea of given, readymade and constructed identity; this really enforced your argument for the watch as signifier and signified. You discuss ethos, and pathos, invoking Faigley, which is good. You discuss metaphor and symbolism, but could go more into denotation and connotation, and other things from Barthes and Blakesly&Brooke. Just a suggestion, but overall superbly done! <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">~Danica Cantrell