covered with frost, the car is a useless object. In this
uselessness, the car’s ‘‘objectality’’ emerges.
RobertS. OventleSeealso:Barthes, Roland; Conceptual Photography;
Interpretation; Modernism; Postmodernism; Repre-
sentation; Representation and Gender; Semiotics
Further Reading
Barthes, Roland.La chambre claire: note sur la photogra-
phie. Paris: Seuil, 1980; asCamera Lucida: Reflections on
Photography, translated by Richard Howard, London:
Flamingo, and New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.
Batchen, Geoffrey.Burning with Desire: The Conception of
Photography. London and Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press, 1997.
Baudrillard, Jean.Fotografien, Photographies, Photographs:
1985–1998. edited by Peter Weibel, translated by Sus-
anne Baumann et al., Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje
Cantz Publishers, 1999.
Bennington, Geoffrey, and Jacques Derrida.Jacques Der-
rida. Paris: Seuil, 1991; asJacques Derrida, translated by
Geoffrey Bennington, Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1993; 2nd edition, 1999.
Caputo, John D., ed.Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Con-
versation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham
University Press, 1997.
Derrida, Jacques. ‘‘Les morts de Roland Barthes.’’ inPsy-
che ́: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Galile ́e, 1987; as ‘‘The
Deaths of Roland Barthes,’’ translated by Pascale-Anne
Braul and Michael Naas, in Derrida, Jacques,The Work
of Mourning, edited by Pascale-Anne Braul and Michael
Naas, Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 2001.
Gane, Mike.Jean Baudrillard: In Radical Uncertainty. Lon-
don and Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press, 2000.
McQuillan, Martin, ed.Deconstruction: A Reader. New
York: Routledge, 2000.
Phillips, David. ‘‘Photo-Logos: Photography and Decon-
struction.’’ inThe Subjects of Art History: Historical
Objects in Contemporary Perspectives,editedbyMarkA.
Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Norris, Christopher.Deconstruction and the ‘‘Unfinished
Project of Modernity.’’New York: Routledge, 2000.
Plissart, Marie-Franc ̧ oise.Droit de regardes, avec un lecture
de Jacques Derrida, Paris: Minuit, 1985; as Derrida,
Jacques,Right of Inspection, photographs by Marie-Fran-
c ̧oise Plissart, translated by David Wills, New York: The
Monacelli Press, 1998.
Zurbrugg, Nicholas, ed.Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artifact.
London and Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1997.JACK DELANO
American
Jack Delano (1914–1997) was a documentary
photographer who photographed social and eco-
nomic conditions for the Farm Security Adminis-
tration (FSA) through the 1930s, but later moved to
Puerto Rico where he became a major postwar
visual artist, working in illustration, photography,
and film and as a composer. His photographic body
throughout his career exemplify the FSA mission to
use photography to make a social argument, to
inform and educate, using the conventions of that
documentary vision but also expanding them stylis-
tically and thematically.
Schooled as a classical musician and as a fine
artist, Delano’s first photographic study of coal
miners in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, for the
Works Progress Administration (WPA) reflects his
earliest attempt at critical engagement with his
photographic subjects. He became intimately in-
volved in their lives and lived in the miner’s
homes and was thus able to photograph with com-
passion rather than detached objectivity. He knew
about being an outsider from his experience as an
immigrant born in the Ukraine and raised in Phi-
ladelphia where he learned to be ‘‘Americanized’’
including changing his name. This powerful exhibi-
tion, informed by the aesthetic values of the popu-
lar front highlighting the achievement of workers,
was acclaimed by many, including photographer
Paul Strand, and led to his hiring by Roy Stryker
for the coveted job of staff photographer for the
Historical Division in 1939. There, Delano worked
closely with his wife Irene whom he married shortly
after starting to work for the FSA until 1942. Irene
assisted him with shooting scripts, making contact
with subjects, and was a lifelong collaborator and
artist in her own right.DECONSTRUCTION