As these last few questions indicate, interpreting this photograph further will require us to be more subjective in our assessment of what is occuring, what the photographer chose to capture, and what she wants us to think about the scene.

• Is the woman grateful for the medicine?
• Is the doctor reading to the woman and the children? If so, what is he reading?
• Are the children looking at the woman as she speaks, or at the medicine in her hand?
• Is the doctor holding himself back from the family, or is he leaning towards them?
• Why might the photographer choose to make the children the central figures in this photograph?
• Why does the photograph include the house and its surroundings?
• Did Wolcott photograph this encounter spontaneously, as it occurred? Or do you think the subjects are posed, as they were in some FSA photographs?
• Examine this photograph again and think about how you would answer each of these questions. What else might you want to know—background information about public health in the South? About tenant farming? About relationships between blacks and whites in the 1930s? About Marion Post Wolcott?—to be secure in your answer?

Copyright © 1997, 2002 University of Pennsylvania HSS
Revised: 09-Feb-2002