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During the Depression, protest marches and picket lines filled the streets and squares of lower Manhattan. Large crowds regularly assembled in City Hall Plaza and in Union Square, the epicenter of the radical labor movement in America, to demonstrate for government relief programs, better working conditions, and social justice. Shahn joined in these events as part of a cadre of leftist artists who considered themselves "workers" creating art for the masses. He also became active in the Artists’ Union and the Artists’ Committee of Action, progressive cultural organizations modeled on trade unions. Shahn often photographed his comrades and other agitators at May Day parades, demonstrations for expanded government art projects, and protests against censorship and international fascism. To emphasize the cadence of the marchers, Shahn moved in and out of the crowds, creating images that evoke the dynamism of these public spectacles. He also made animated street portraits of his compatriots, including Bernarda Bryson, Stuart Davis, Stephen Dimitroff, Boris Gorelick, Moses Soyer, Max Spivak, and Roselle Springer. A number of these photographs appeared as illustrations in Art Front, the leftist organ of the Artists’ Union and the Artists’ Committee of Action, edited by Shahn and his peers. He focused his camera on bystanders as well, recording the supportive gestures and bemused expressions of those watching the spirited marchers carry their elaborate banners and placards. Shahn’s vivid protest photographs illustrate the artist’s activist response to the Depression-era conditions he chronicled in New York’s poorer neighborhoods. Untitled (Theatre Union demonstrators, May Day Parade, NYC), May 1, 1934 Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Bernarda Bryson Shahn
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