Luce's Fortune: a Wealth of American Images and Ideals

Luce's Fortune: A Wealth of American Images and Ideals

A CASE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

The pages of Fortune magazine between 1931 and 1941 yield a history of business, economy, and identity in America. Fortune's creator, Henry Robinson Luce, proposed that the magazine would tell the romantic and engaging story of business in America. He chose a combination of photography and lavish prose to capture and display the timeless power of business. Luce's emphasis on photography is not surprising--photographs were powerful because they were widely regarded as objective records of fact. As Luce desired, Fortune's photographs are beautiful, lavish, and romantic, and the expensive magazine carried an authoritative air. In Fortune's journalistic context, photographs were agents of stories and were infused with the values of capitalist America. What story do these images tell, and how do they accomplish their goal? Considering the national perception of business during the Depression years and understanding Luce's goals for his new magazine will allow us to explore photographic essays as journalistic pieces, and photojournalists as messengers of Fortune's ideals.

SITE MAP

The navigation bar at the top of the page links to each of the eight main pages through four titles and four images. For a narrative and explanation of the role of Henry Robinson Luce's Fortune during the period 1931-1941, proceed through the main contents of the site, beginning with the introduction below and moving sequentially through topics listed to the left of the title image. This analytical material is supplemented by examples of photographic essays. To peruse the four main examples of Fortune's photographic essays between 1935 and 1936, choose any of the images on the home page or to the right of the title image, or begin with the first (<a href="Communistessay.html">"The Communist Party "</a>) and move forward chronologically. The four main essays were chosen from within a short period of time to best show the conversations between Fortune and the nation. Many essays display the entire essay layout, while other essays selected images out of the text for better viewing. To view a larger version of the Contents page, click on the image below and to the left. Similarly, to see a larger version of linked images and an analysis of their function, select the image and a separate window will appear. Pop-up windows that hold a series of images are internally linked; click the image to continue or to close at the end of the sequence. In all windows, titles and captions are from the magazine and are rendered in white.

Contents Page:

Note that Margaret Bourke-White is given credit for her photography. She was Fortune's first staff photographer, hired personally by founder Henry Luce at the magazine's inception in 1929.

Page 1: Capitalism in the Depression

REVITILIZING INDUSTRY:</b

Between 1931 and 1941, Henry Luce's Fortune sought to rehabilitate the nationally problematized image of big business through the authority of photography. The panic of 1929 began as a crisis of the stock market and therefore of an elite Wall Street world, but in a short time the psychological, emotional, and financial effects rippled out from Wall Street to touch Americans across geographic regions and down the economic scale. "Big industry" had rushed America forward with "a narrowly conceived drive for efficiency" and had created, "tragic wastefulness of want amid plenty" (Cooney). Big business in many ways had caused the economy to fail and industry might have remained a problematic entity in the public eye. But despite the failures of traditional structures, such as government, economy, religion and democratic ideology (see Henry Purcell or Walter Lippman's writings), Americans largely continued to believe that the American Dream was viable and that a better future was forthcoming. Ultimately, Americans looked to industry and technology for their country's rehabilitation, believing in the ability of technology to create a better future. While Fortune legitimized the ideals and structures of industry, Cooney explains there was a "contemporary emphasis on large-scale undertakings in engineering and technology." Organizations like the Works Project Administration and other New Deal programs sought to revitalize the country on a grand scale.

PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY:</B

Photographs were widely used to create images of American-ness and identity during the Depression years, and one of those images was of benevolent industry. Photographs became important to advertisers, and a rising consumer culture absorbed not just products but the ideals they represented. Americans found new solidarity amid their hopes and aspirations through the burgeoning mass media, which emphasized American identity and shared experience. Never before had Americans literally seen so much of themselves as they did after the rise of the miniature camera in the 1930s. Amateurs and professionals took advantage of the snap shot camera in newspapers and magazines, as well as in artistic documentaries (Robert Frank's The Americans, Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor's "Again the Covered Wagon," and Walker Evans' American Photographs), while New Deal programs such as the Farm Security Administration relied on photography to promote their initiatives. Photographs enjoyed great authority and the public learned to put great faith in their message. Fortune capitalized on the power of photography when it formed its pro-business message.

CONSUMING IDEALS:</B

At the same time, advertisers began to highlight the appearance and effects of their products. An explosion of images provided consumers with "factual records" of merchandise. Thus, consumerism became a form of security during hard times as advertisements concentrated on "fantasy, status, and therapy" (Cooney). The rise of commercial consumerism was one step on the track toward restoring public faith in industry and manufacture, making the American dream of self-reliance possible once again. Yet consumerism developed on many levels. Americans indeed felt empowered by spending money, but they also became consumers of immaterial products. The government, media, and entertainment industries rushed to supply Americans' need for heroes and ideals. Magazines sold advertisers an audience, for whom the magazine carried advertisements as well as content, ideology, and appealing images. The image sold to readers by Henry Robinson Luce 's magazines--Time (1923), Fortune (1930), and Life (1936)--sought to be particularly American. These magazines used photographic integrity to justify the ideology they projected. Luce proclaimed that America's great purpose was "to create on this continent . . . the first modern technological, prosperous, humane and reverent civilization" (Time/Luce). His belief remained unshaken by the Great Depression, and his plan to create Fortune in honor of business moved forward. Business had pushed America into the Great Depression, but the unique purpose of Fortune was to promote industry. Photography would be its greatest tool.

Caveat on Chrysler

This essay on the Chrysler Corporation (August 1935), with photographs by Russell C. Aikins, is one of many essays Fortune featured to document the internal successes and struggles of a business--a prime example of the Corporation Story. This image captures the stark beauty of the industrial process and elevates it to high art by using the language of artistic straight photography--clean lines and a level eye. The caption is a dry description of the photographed action. Note the similarities between this title and that of the article on Hearst on the Photo Essay page. Although one essay's subject is a business and the other an individual, Fortune treats both as economic entities worthy of analysis.

Caveat on "Success Story": This essay entitled, "Success Story", details the comfortable middle class life of the spray paint man at the auto factory. He lives in a modest house on a nice street with rows of similar houses, and his wife does the dinner after washing the laundry on a washing board. With these complacent images and the kingly story line, Fortune's message is that business helps everyone. With industry, consumers as well as producers come out on top. Even a blue-collar worker is a middle class king in his home.

Page 2: The Magazine

LUCE'S PURPOSE:</B

To capture the "struggle, excitement, romance, wealth and power" that he attributed to the world of business, Henry Luce created a new magazine to handle the overflow of Time's Business section (Swanberg). He considered the titles "Power" and "Tycoon", but settled on "Fortune." Luce waved aside the irony of establishing a business magazine at the onset of the United State's shocking economic turn for the worse because, like most of his colleagues, Luce viewed the economic slump as a temporary downturn. Luce's assurance came from his absolute faith in the link between business and America. He once offered an alternative to Calvin Coolidge's "the business of America is business," saying "In think I can improve on that: the business of business is America" (Time/Luce). As the Depression persisted, Fortune "had to adjust its approach to address the gnawing questions of its cause, effect, and remedy" (Sass). In the meantime, Fortune would operate on the mission statement found in its prospectus: "Business is the greatest single common denominator of interest among the active leading citizens of the U.S. . . . Fortune's purpose is to reflect Industrial Life in ink and paper and work and picture as the finest skyscraper reflects it in skill and architecture" (Peterson).

FORTUNE'S PHOTOGRAPHY:</B

In 1929, when Luce was still forming his ideas for the new magazine, he saw photographs of an industrial steel-mill that he greatly admired. He sent for the artist, and thus began his professional relationship with Margaret Bourke-White. In conversation with Bourke-White, Luce explained the goal of his magazine, where "pictures and words should be conscious partners" to explore business and "modern industrial civilization" from every angle (Swanberg). Sass argues that instead of following the format of other business magazines, full of stark data and analysis (and occasionally a current or industry event), Luce wanted Fortune to draw from artistic publications like Camera Work or Vanity Fair. His immodest goal was to utilize and revolutionize the place of photography in magazines. While Luce began his project with Bourke-White as the ideal photographer, capable of capturing the lavish glamour of business, she was soon joined by others and her aesthetic style alone did not establish Fortune's reputation for fine photography.

MAINTAINING A VISION:</B

Fortune faced a distinct challenge throughout the Depression years to maintain a pro-business rhetoric for its upper class readership, but its message was not blind or simplistic. Luce favored debate and supported writers and editors who analyzed various views. His associates in 1967 noted that, "The degree of autonomy he gave his editors and the interplay of ideas he encouraged was a constant source of amazement to any outsider who encountered it" (Time/Luce). Fortune exhibited essays on both the accomplishments (<a href="Wardsessay.html">Wards</a>) and failures (<a href="Woolessay.html">Wool</a>) of various companies through corporation stories (see<a href="photoessay.html">Photo Essays</a>, but it sympathized with business over the issue of <a href="Strikebreakingessay.html">labor</a>. The magazine allowed debate but kept a unified vision and faith, becoming an elevated literature of industrial forces through its photographs and prose. Fortune defined America through her innovations and developments, suggesting business as the artistic and cultural force capable of replacing old forms of reassurance and tradition (Cooney). Fortune dispelled Americans' fears of new technology by showing industry as a beautiful force, integral to the American landscape.

Caveat on Cycle Race

This essay shows athletes as American heroes. Each stage their six-day race is rendered by camera. The camera tells us that the champion's battle was hard won, and he has fans who respect and admire his success. Magazines, newspapers, radio--all media had a role in creating distinct American personalities and heroes during the nostalgia of the 1930s.

Caveat on Hearst:

After Dr. Erich Salomon's groundbreaking photo essay entitle, "William Randolph Hearst at Home" (Fortune, 1931) Hearst status as a legendary public figure grew. On the heels of Salomon's essay, Peter Stackpole takes these pictures and again portrays a casual and un-intimidating millionaire. Hearst plays croquet, reads and strolls about his mansion. In contrast to the photographs of Hearst, which are informal and intimate, the text of this article and these captions has a distant tone and focuses on Hearst's possessions and reputation. Note the similarities between this title and that of the "Chrysler" from the Depression page.

Page 3: Photo Essays

PHOTOGRAPHIC STRAINS:</B

Fortune created images of both businesses and people through various types of photojournalism. Luce favored the clean industrial photography of Margaret Bourke-White, but managing editor Robert Ingersoll favored a more personal style. Anne Sass's brochure from the on-line exhibition displayed by the International Center of Photography entitled, "Picturing Business: The Photography of Fortune", describes four types of photographs in Fortune's pages: industrial photography, the corporation story, the portfolio, and the humanistic, documentary photo story. These collections were not merely series of photographs, or pretty images to fill magazine pages, but self-contained journalist stories. With the proper captions and sequencing, these photographs captured observable evidence, created a narrative of the facts, and made a judgment on the story--just as print new stories do.

INDUSTRIAL NARRATIVES:</b

On this site, photographers such as Bourke-White, Arthur Gerlach, and Russell C. Aikins represent the first strain of photography in Fortune's pages. These artists used the industrial aesthetic to take pictures of the structures of business and modern invention. Industrial photographs can be cold because they focus on their human subjects as button pushers or parts of the capitalist assembly line instead of as individuals. Industrial photograph's primary effect was to raise their subjects to an artistic level. These art works took industry--fearful and ugly--and made it awesome and beautiful. To Luce, industrial photographs captured the strength, power, and romance of business. Fortune sometimes displayed industrial photographs as a portfolio, as if Fortune were an art photography magazine. Portfolio images had striking aesthetic beauty and helped establish Fortune as an artistic venture. The corporation story incorporated a series of industrial images and a textual analysis of the company’s structure, and often focused on the narrative history of a business. The essay on <a href="Wardsessay.html">Montgomery Wards</a> is a corporation story that glorifies an anonymous assembly line. The essay elevates efficiency as an American ideal, while the story on the Senate legitimizes its wealth by highlighting a Senator's hard work. In order to pass legislation, the congressman himself must suffer "life, death and limbo." Each of these essays uses industrial photographs to show how American ideas are manifest in business and bureaucracy.

DOCUMENTED PERSONALITY TYPES:</B

Because of the work of managing editor Ralph Ingersoll, industrial photography and the corporation story did not enjoy complete reign in Fortune. Ingersoll greatly disliked industrial photography for its constructed nature and cheap tricks, such as a low angle of vision (which made architectural structures loom upward impressively) and emphasis on minor details (literally ignoring the "big picture" and broader implications). Industrial photographs were too disconnected from human subjects to appeal to Ingersoll. Under his editorship and encouragement, Fortune began to seek out and accept photographs that did not focus on industrial artifice. The development of the miniature camera greatly aided this change in photo stories. The precursor to today's 35 mm could be carried anywhere and could capture spontaneous action on film for the first time. To help Fortune and its photographers learn the style that complimented the miniature camera, Ingersoll invited Dr. Erich Salomon to join the magazine in New York in 1931. Salomon became widely famous for his candid shots of human subjects and for establishing the photo story. Salomon's journalistic technique showed individual moments in his subjects' lives, creating greater intimacy and the sense of a personal relationship with the subjects. Humanistic images worked as documents, displaying types of people in innate settings. The subjects of these documentary photographs were published en masse, each one becoming the prototypical publisher, worker, or statesmen. Fortune was able to market identities to its audience because, as an advertising enterprise, the magazine carried the burden of showing photographs of American people to themselves. Industrial photographs sold a distinct image of business to America as well, and thus marketed industry as a benevolent player in the American system. While the emphasis of people-based photo stories was generally more spontaneous and democratic than industrial photographs, humanistic photo stories were no less typifying or romanticized.

DOCUMENTARY TRAJECTORY:</b

Documentary photography did not live only in magazines as photo essays, but was utilized by the New Deal administrations to help promote their efforts. During the Depression years, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) hired photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to capture American character among the poor and displaced on film. The origin of some of the best known of the FSA images was a writing assignment requested by Fortune. Editors hired Walker Evans and James Agee (a writer) to complete a photo story on life in the south, for which they traveled to Alabama and stayed with tenant farmers. When the story was dropped for size and time, Evans and Agee published an expanded version entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men(1941). Evans <a href="Communistessay.html">earlier work</a> has the same qualities that made his images of the tenant families striking--Salomon's spontaneity, an aesthetic appreciation of details, and the complete absence of pretension or condescension. Between 1938-41, the United States and Fortune because increasingly interested in the European war and in human stories. The year of Evans and Agee's publication marked the beginning of a greater emphasis on humanistic photography that carried Fortune past the pro-business ideological roots that Luce established.