Word: despairful
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...Shahn's photographs are more than simply pictures of ordinary people--they are reflections of an individual's mood, a child's innocence, a worker's despair. Shahn has the gift of capturing moments of vulnerability, when a person's thoughts and feelings are revealed in his or her eyes, body language or movement. Looking around the exhibit, the intensity is overwhelming, because Shahn's works are full of these instances of real emotion and deep revelation...
...Shahn somehow takes us even beyond this point of questioning, and hints that this man is, perhaps, in despair, that this man is lost. This man's face, as captured by Shahn, exposes solitude, the knowledge of the possibility of dreams and the understanding of dreams broken. Shahn's ability to capture these moments of emotional revelation is what makes his works gripping, enrapturing and haunting...
...Even as Shahn portrays the despair and melancholy of the Depression, he also captures the hope and strength of the people, especially through his photographs of children. In "Greenwich Village (New York City)," circa 1932-35, Shahn portrays at the same time the time's despair and youth's hope. Here he captures four boys gathered on the sidewalk, looking at each other like lost children. The boy in the center concentrates on the crumpled newspaper he holds in his hands. There is a sadness that comes with the attention that he devotes to this seemingly old and worthless newspaper...
Reeves should not despair, however. In less than two years, Cambridge's so-called "January sport" will return, and Reeves will probably find himself, at least temporarily, in the mayor's seat once more...
...future as a lonely bum--unless he builds a table in Shop. In Habit Patterns, Barbara sobs because she's a slob ("You make a pretty picture," the catty narrator says, "with your rumpled skirt, your spotted sweater and your hair in a tizzy"). John, in Narcotics: Pit of Despair, takes that first fatal drag on a joint and instantly becomes a heroin addict. What could be spookier? A Date with Your Family, in which five pod people purporting to be a suburban family sit down to dinner. "Pleasant, unemotional conversation," we are told, "helps digestion." Hey, what is this...