The photo league

Abstract

For the Photo League, a group of documentary photographers working in New York City from 1936 to 1951, 1947 was a particularly ominous year. In documenting the ghettoes and poverty-stricken neighbourhoods that the organization knew well, the group formulated a policy of openly declaring its discontent at a capitalist system that it saw as failing the working class, and through photographs made by the members the organization intended to effect social change. However, on 4 December the Photo League, along with seventy-nine other organizations and eleven schools, was listed by the Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, as ‘either totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive’.¹ The Attorney General's list was based on information furnished by the FBI and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), and was compiled by concentrating on the actions of each suspected organization's leaders. If the leader's actions consistendy followed a ‘subversive party line’, then the whole organization was considered to be suspect. Such assumptions were based on the FBI's philosophy that any person, no matter how innocent, who associated with other persons with ties to the Communist Party of America (CPA) automatically became contaminated with the disease of communism, which then spread throughout an organization. The publication of the list quickly led to panic and outrage, especially when persons and groups realized that avenues to disprove guilt by association were unavailable.²