In the photograph, RECEIVING DOLLS DONATED BY THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SOCIETY, by TOYO MIYATKE, 1943), denotatively it is just an image of little girls holding baby dolls that were given to them.
The setting of the picture seems as though they are standing in a room that looks like a classroom. The girls are of Asian decent. The girls are not in traditional garments but in “American” attire. The girls are looking down at the doll as though they are enthralled of their new toy. Some of them have their head slightly tilted, giving it an endearing, tender, or soft look. One of the girls, third from the left, is studying the features of her doll. Her face seems like it has a quizzical look on her face from the angle. There is a single boy standing on the right side of the image.AT THE TIME OF THE LOUISVILLE FLOOD, (by MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE,1937), there is a line of people holding bags, buckets, and baskets. They are standing in front of a billboard that says, “THE WORLD’S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING” and “THERE’S NO WAY LIKE THE AMERICAN WAY”. Some of the people in line are in tattered clothing. There is a lady that is looking directly at the camera. She looks very tired and weathered. The setting of this shot seems as though they are waiting in line for some type of assistances outside of a store of some sort. There is an electrical line that is at the top right corner of the picture. It may imply that the setting is in the city. At the left side of the picture there is a couple of people that may look like a couple adolescents.
The images that I chose speak together in unison of the irony of “the American way”. The girls are holding dolls that are “white” dolls. Do those dolls depict the American image? Their skin color is not quite the same as the dolls. The girl with the quizzical look may have thoughts running through her mind of the “American” image. “We got such good, fantastic stories to tell. All our stories are different.“, is a quote from a Japanese lady urging Asian Americans to know their roots . The time period of the picture and the quote is a good connection of the two. At the time of the picture being taken, Japanese American citizens were being sent to internment camps. These words could reflect positively for the young girls in the picture holding the “white” dolls to not let go of their ancestry teachings regardless of what they are proposed. THE WORLD’S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING”, those Americans standing in front of the billboard are starving and in need of assistance and some of them are in tattered clothing. “THERE’S NO WAY LIKE THE AMERICAN WAY”, the figures in the ad is of a “white” family driving a car having a merry ole time, as where the citizens below are in troubled times. The date on the picture implies that it was taken during the Great Depression. During that time frame “the black leaders and intellectuals declared disappointment in the Roosevelt administration: “The Negro worker has good reason to feel that his government has betrayed him under the New Deal.” . The people in that line were probably the product of the National Recovery Administration.
Imagery is strong when it is used with the right context. An image is everlasting. It has the power to persuade and call to the masses. These images exude the same irony even though they are not taken at the same time.
