In my last post, I accidentally mixed social documentarians. I was speaking of Milton Rigovin, the social documentary photography who documented the effects of the declining steel industry in Buffalo. But my mind thought and then typed Lionel Rogosin. My mind frequently mixes and matches names and places, people and purposes as it sees fit.
One Christmas, I gave my father a copy of Rigovin's The Forgotten Ones. At the time, my father's explanation to me regarding the declining steel industry and its consequential effect on the African American community in Buffalo seemed too simplistic to me. After the work ran out, some of the men who worked in the steel factories abandoned their families. To my father, the answer was simple. To take away a man's livelihood and leave him with the inability to support his family left him impotent (my words not his). To my father, it meant taking away his manhood and purpose for being. Simple. When you have nothing to offer, why would you stay?
One Christmas, I gave my father a copy of Rigovin's The Forgotten Ones. At the time, my father's explanation to me regarding the declining steel industry and its consequential effect on the African American community in Buffalo seemed too simplistic to me. After the work ran out, some of the men who worked in the steel factories abandoned their families. To my father, the answer was simple. To take away a man's livelihood and leave him with the inability to support his family left him impotent (my words not his). To my father, it meant taking away his manhood and purpose for being. Simple. When you have nothing to offer, why would you stay?
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