At the Time of the Louisville Flood, also popularly known asWorld's Highest Standard of Living, is a black and white photograph taken between January and February 1937 by photojournalistMargaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White was on assignment forLife magazine covering the aftermath of theOhio River flood, which left seventy percent of the city ofLouisville underwater. The photo shows Black flood refugees waiting in line forRed Cross relief with abillboard advertisement for theNational Association of Manufacturers in the background that reads "World's Highest Standard of Living: There's No Way Like the American Way".[1]
The image was published inLife magazine on February 15, 1937 – the second in Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series, which had begun a week earlier. The photo is generally categorized as an example ofphotojournalism, and later became viewed asdocumentary photography. It is one of four photos of the Red Cross relief line taken from different angles, and one of more than 20 flood-related images Bourke-White took in January and February 1937, eight of which were published byLife magazine. The photo is often recontextualized and used as a symbol of theGreat Depression even though it was originally intended to document the Louisville Flood; the photo lacks visual cues about its location and subject, and awareness of its context was lost over time. It is among Bourke-White's most well-known photographs.
Digital and print selections from Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series are currently found in several different archival collections, including theLife Picture Collection, theHerbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, theNew Orleans Museum of Art, and theInternational Center of Photography. An additional set of photos documenting Bourke-White's work capturing the series are held by theUniversity of Louisville.
Bourke-White's first love washerpetology, which she had intended on studying since she was a child. She attended classes at five different universities, studying photography withClarence White atColumbia while also pursuing herpetology underAlexander Ruthven atU-M. She started her own small photography business, which almost led her to abandon the profession altogether.[2] After receiving her bachelor's degree in biology from Cornell in 1927, she began using the name "Bourke-White" and moved to Cleveland, establishing a studio to service the architectural and industrial community. By 1928, at the age of 24, Bourke-White was making a name for herself with images of the Otis Steel Company. American magazine magnateHenry Luce came calling for her a year later, recruiting her to the newFortune magazine as a photojournalist.[2]
In the 1930s, most Americans got their news from radio, newspapers and magazines.Television began broadcasting in the United States in 1928, but theGreat Depression andWorld War II slowed its development and mass adoption until the 1950s.[3] Up to that point, Bourke-White was known for her commercial work in architectural and industrial photography, serving mostly corporate clients.[4]
Her interest indocumentary photography slowly grew in her new role as a photographer forFortune. She became the first American photographer granted access to theSoviet Union, visiting the country three times on assignment to cover its growingindustrialization. During those trips, she photographed workers and peasants alongside the Russian infrastructure.[1] In 1934, she produced a photo essay on theDust Bowl, focusing more on people rather than industry for the first time. The experience covering the Dust Bowl changed her and her future approach to photography:[5]
I had never seen people caught helpless like this in total tragedy. They had no defense. They had no plan...I was deeply moved by the suffering I saw and touched particularly by the bewilderment of the farmers. I think this was the beginning of my awareness of people in a human, sympathetic sense as subject for the camera...
In early 1936, Bourke-White began a collaboration withErskine Caldwell to produce what eventually becameYou Have Seen Their Faces the next year, a project which documented poverty in theAmerican South.[5] By late 1936, she was hired as the first woman photojournalist[1] and staff photographer for the newly formedLife magazine, along withAlfred Eisenstaedt,Peter Stackpole, andThomas McAvoy. Her photo ofFort Peck Dam appeared on the cover of the first issue.[6]
The Ohio River flooded in late January 1937 after heavy rain earlier in the month, causing damage along the river and smaller tributaries. Temperatures were cold enough that ice was reported floating along northern portions of the river. Five states were impacted:West Virginia,Ohio,Indiana,Illinois, andKentucky, with a total of one million left homeless by the flooding.[7]
The flood destroyed more than half of the city ofLouisville, Kentucky, putting seventy percent of the city under water and forcing 175,000 residents out of their homes. The West End and downtown were submerged under 10 feet (3.05 m) of water. The river crested at approximately 52.15 feet (15.89 m) on January 27, and the water was still receding in February.[8]
Flood damage was estimated at $250 million ($5.47 billion in2024). According to the American Red Cross, it was the greatest natural disaster in the organization's history up to that point. TheNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) contacted theUnited States Coast Guard for help, with reports that Black residents were facing discrimination when it came to flood rescues.[9]
The Ohio River flood was still breaking news when Bourke-White finished up covering thesecond inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.Life editorShaw Billings gave Bourke-White an hour to figure out how to get down to Louisville and cover the story. She boarded the final flight and landed in Louisville just before the airfield was submerged. She thenhitchhiked by raft into town, taking several photos along the way.[10] Later, in 1963, Bourke-White recalled: "I thumbed rides in rowboats and once on a large raft. These makeshift craft were bringing food packages and bottles of clean drinking water to marooned families and seeking out survivors. Working from the rowboats gave me good opportunities to record acts of mercy as they occurred."[11]
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The offices ofThe Courier Journal andThe Louisville Times at the Old U.S. Customshouse and Post Office building in downtown Louisville became a base of operations for the press, with Bourke-White documenting their efforts to cover the flood, as well as using the offices as a place to sleep.[11] Three of the photos in her series document the newspaper staff, including a group photo showing them working on the latest newspaper edition by the light ofkerosene lamps due to the power outage.[12] Two other photos depict editorTom Wallace and news editor Wilbur B. Cogshall.[13]
Many churches were converted into food distribution and relief centers, often because they were built on higher ground.[13] During her tour of the flood, Bourke-White captured a photo of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where the pews were used to store canned food that was distributed by the Red Cross.[13] AtChurchill Downs, Bourke-White took a photo of the flooded racetrack. Inside the clubhouse, she captured a famous image of Jim Lawhorn, an elderly Black man in his 90s.[13] The photo of Lawhorn, a former slave turned flood refugee,[14] made an impression with the public.[12] InBuechel, Bourke-White visited a relief station at Hikes Grade School, where she photographed a nurse getting ready to inoculate flood refugees againsttyphoid.[15]
Throughout her assignment, she was guided by Kentucky native Corwin Short, who was also a photographer and captured more than 100 photos of the event.[16] Short took photos of Bourke-White working on the series, documenting her work along the way. In one photo, Bourke-White and her camera and tripod are poised on the roof of a car amidst the flood below. Other photos in Short's series show Bourke-White walking along a pontoon bridge and as a passenger in a rowboat.[17]
The first photos and coverage of the Ohio River flood published byLife appeared in the February 1, 1937, edition,[18] but Bourke-White was not the photographer, as she was still on assignment at the inauguration of FDR in Washington, with one of her photos of the event in the same edition.[11] Her own series of flood photos was first published in the February 8 issue.[19] This was followed the next week with a series of photos in the February 15 issue.[13]At the Time of the Louisville Flood[20] first appears as a work ofphotojournalism in the February 15 edition ofLife (Volume 2, Number 7) on page nine, in a story titled "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line". The photo was accompanied by a description of the overall scene on page nine, with two pages of additional photos showing flood victims.[21] In that issue, Bourke-White reported on both the flooding of the Ohio River and the new Supreme Court building.[22]
The image depicts the aftermath of the 1937 Ohio River flood in Kentucky, showing residents fromBlack neighborhoods in Louisville.[α] Men, women, and children wait in line carrying baskets and pails to receive water, food and medicine from a Red Cross relief station[13] in the area of 13th and Broadway in theCalifornia neighborhood.[23]
A billboard featuring an advertisement from theNational Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is visible behind the queue.[7] It depicts a seemingly happy white middle-class family driving through the countryside. A husband, a wife, two children, and a dog are visible in the car. The words, "World's Highest Standard of Living" appear plastered across the top of the billboard, while down below, to the right of the man driving the car, smaller words appear that say, "There's No Way Like the American Way!" Of the 18 people in line seeking flood relief, only one is staring at the billboard.[24]
Design theoristClive Dilnot argues that the framing and composition of the photo is simple, but deliberate in its contrasts of "black/white, rich/poor, reality/illusion". There are multiple levels of interpretation here, writes Dilnot. For one, there is the very real, documentary aspect of the photo, the reality of the event itself. On the other hand, there is the glaring contrast between what the poster on the billboard is communicating to the viewer, and the contradiction that manifests itself in the line of people seeking relief, contrasts that Dilnot believes alters the reference point of the viewer from the Louisville Flood and relief efforts itself to economic concerns of the Great Depression of 1937 and the divisions and contrasts it entails, those between blacks and whites, and between "wealth and poverty". The photo serves to remind the viewer, writes Dilnot, that the racial divide is also an economic one.[24]
PhilosopherBarbara E. Savedoff explores the same ideas as Dilnot noting that "Bourke-White exposes the gap between propaganda and reality, between black and white, between those who enjoy the 'world's highest standard of living,' and the vulnerability of those suffering in need."[25] Savedoff also emphasizes thedocumentary nature of the image; Bourke-White captured this scene as the line of people passed in front of the billboard. It is real, as it was neither constructed nor artificial. She wonders if the image will have the same impact in the future, as the rise ofcomputer-based tools alters the assumptions and expectations of the audience. Savedoff poses the question: "[As] we become accustomed to seamless assemblages and montages, might we become less able to appreciate the profundity, the powerful testimony, of the straight image?"[25]
Literary criticDonald Pizer explores the history of thebread line depicted inAt the Time of the Louisville Flood. The photo was first published byLife with the title "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line".[21] Pizer notes that the image of the bread line in America has a longer history, first arising after thePanic of 1893 towards the end of theGilded Age, but acquiring an association with theGreat Depression many decades later. Americans waiting in bread lines at Depression-erasoup kitchens became one of the defining images of the 1930s.[26]
The image appeared everywhere in the media at the time, but usually anonymously, with no photo credit attached. Some photographers likeEdward Steichen (Breadline on Sixth Avenue, c. 1930) andDorothea Lange (White Angel Bread Line, 1933) received credit and became known for their bread line photos. Pizer argues that Bourke-White's depiction of the bread line follows in the longer tradition of its use as an "American icon of poverty", but differs from its original meaning in the 1890s, when it was largely seen as a form ofclass conflict. Here, Pizer writes, Bourke-White's bread line becomes a symbol of "social disparity" in terms of "racial dimensions".[26]
Art historianTheodore M. Brown describes how the photo ofAt the Time of the Louisville Flood was recontextualized over time.[β] Brown acknowledges that the photo depicts members of a lower income Black neighborhood in Louisville that was hit hard by the floods, but also points out that it does not show "unemployment or welfare, or the kind of chronic poverty" that was documented by the government during the Great Depression or by Bourke-White in theSouthern United States. In spite of these differences, the photo instead, writes Brown, is "used repeatedly to comment on inequality, poverty and deprivation".[21] Brown refers to the image as "probably her most famous individual photograph".[20]
Art historianJohn A. Walker explored Brown's idea of recontextualization, arguing that the photo took on additional interpretations and meaning once it was removed from the original context of theLife magazine article about the flood. "Since the photograph itself makes no reference to a flood or to Louisville", writes Walker, "only those featured in the photograph, or who helped to produce it, or who read the article inLife would be aware of its specific spatio-temporal point of origin."[21]
Reich propaganda ministerJoseph Goebbels made use of the photograph inNazi propaganda, publishing the photo in 1937 with the caption, "Thank God, we have a better way."[20]
There are more than 20 known photos in Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series. Of the entire series, only eight photos were originally published byLife in 1937, with approximately 13 or more left unpublished. Additional photos taken by Corwin Short of Bourke-White in the field during the original assignment forLife were published, exhibited, and donated to theUniversity of Louisville in 2002.[23]
At the Time of the Louisville Flood is part of a sub-series within the larger Louisville Flood series consisting of at least four known photos of the same scene from different angles and perspectives. This sub-series includesAt the Time of the Louisville Flood,[13]Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville,[29]Untitled (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville, II),[7] andLouisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.[30]At the Time of the Louisville Flood is the only published image in the sub-series.[13]
Two of the unpublished photos in the series reveal the line of people receding towards the back into the distance down the street, while the other two do not, constraining the frame to show either 18 (At the Time of the Louisville Flood)[13] or 21 people waiting in line (Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.).[30] Bourke-White's reframing of the shot in the other two images (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville I and II) shows the line of people becoming much longer in both directions, expanding towards the right foreground of the frame where it disappears inside a building that houses the relief center, and also into the far distance to the left in the background, showing that the line of people disappears around and down the corner of the street, visibly emerging after some distance as the winding line of people appears in the frame once again off to the side in the background. Curator Brian Piper of theNew Orleans Museum of Art notes that unlike the original published version, more information is provided about the famous scene with this additional image, as, according to Piper, the "camera's vantage in this version [Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville] gives a sense of perspective and lets us know just how long the queue of displaced people extended down the street."[29]
A fourth photo in the sub-series,Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.,[γ] is taken towards the line of people from the side instead of away from it, and from a lower angle.[30]
† indicates a photo in the Red Cross relief station sub-series. The unpublished list is incomplete.
Unpublished