From the Other Half to the Down and Out: Reflections on Poverty in the Documentary Mode

Authors

  • Jasmin Humburg Universität Hamburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.223

Keywords:

Poverty, Documentary, Photography, Television

Abstract

This article investigates how poverty is negotiated in the social documentary mode. By considering the work of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine as well as scrutinizing two HBO documentaries, Down and Out in America“ (1985) and American Winter“ (2013), I argue that there is a continuous disparity between those who represent and those who are being represented. I will exemplify how this imbalance is facilitated through visual rhetoric and narrative form in documentary representations of poverty.

Author Biography

Jasmin Humburg, Universität Hamburg

Jasmin Humburg studied English and American Studies, Media Studies as well as Communication Studies at the University of Hamburg and at Johns Hopkins University. She holds a BA and an MA in English and American Studies. Currently she is a PhD Student and a research and teaching assistant at the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her dissertation project explores televisual narratives of poor America in the era of the ‘Great Recession’.

Downloads

Published

2015-05-20

How to Cite

Humburg, Jasmin. “From the Other Half to the Down and Out: Reflections on Poverty in the Documentary Mode”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, May 2015, doi:10.5283/copas.223.

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 1 (2015)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Most read articles by the same author(s)