Alienation - By Emma Maron

Alienation can be defined as "the state of experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved (wikipedia)."  Unemployment may generate a sense of political alienation.  Alienation in the 20th century showed the problem of labor in the new information economy, and the conflict between art and mass media- this was apparent in Richard Avedon's pictures.  Richard Bolton examines the boundaries of alienation describing it as "men and women who work hard at hard uncelebrated jobs, the people who are often ignored and over looked" (Bolton, pg. 6).  I would add to this description of alienation as not including others in the same as what everyone else had.  This could relate to the trickle-down economic effect where the rich had so much and the poor got nothing, therefore explaining the huge gap in the economic standing (Bolton pg. 7).  Avedon's black and white photography bring a lot of controversy to the topic of alienation in the workplace.  

The photo above is from the cover of Richard Avedon book titled 'In the American West.'  I choose this picture because to me this explained the type of message Avedon was trying to show to people about the poor class.  Her face is very dirty, her hair is messy and unclean, and her clothes torn and she is skinny which shows a poor diet.  I felt that from this photo it was a clear message about how the poor class was mistreated, and how they had no respect for the work that they did.  The rest of the pictures in his book depict the same message of other workers, parents and kids.