Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

sant and inviting scene. The young women are well dressed, their hair is well
styled. If we did not know better, we might not think that the young women
are workers, that they live under miserable conditions, without any privacy at
home. 12 This picture says: here is a place where you can be, where you can follow
your interests, where you will meet other women who share your interests.
The picture gives an impression of comfortableness and security. The picture
does not evoke our pity. On the contrary, it demonstrates a sense of pride; it
represents a public scene, but also appears intimate and private.
A sense of pride and a close connection between private and public life
are characteristics of both the women’s movement and social work. And the
photograph is a medium giving its objects a public meaning.
Let me explain this in several brief concluding remarks. I said that the
picture could even be compared to a painting. It has often been overlooked that
paintings help us to share a public or collective view and experience (as do all pieces
of art), and they do this through the work of the artist himself. The fascination
with photography around 1900 and thereafter was due not least to the fact that
photography allowed for a combining of the public character of traditional works
of art with the intimate and private view and experience of the photographer and
viewer. 13 But such a connection of two opposite spheres is of a very precarious
character. It remains hidden in technology. As everybody knows, it may be misused
and needs to be handled in a responsible manner. The album of 1929 is impressive
not least because it is an example of such a responsible approach.
It shows the clients of social work in their individuality and their human
dignity, and it reflects the problem of social work in demanding recognition
of and respect for the ones who are thrust aside by society and acceptance of
the marginalised as full members of this society. This is what the viewer of the
photos in the album may learn in particular from the images depicting services
for young people with intellectual and psychological disabilities and the female
police (figure 40, figure 41, figure 42).
12
The young workers at that time did not have a room, and a lot of them not even a bed, to themselves. A common
source of additional income for the worker families was to rent the beds for hours to so-called Schlafburschen. Cf.
Alice Salomon, „Klubs und Erholungsheime für jugendliche Arbeiter,“ Die Jugendfürsorge, 1, no. 9 (1900): 534-
541; repr., Salomon, Frauenemanzipation und soziale Verantwortung, vol. 1(Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1997):
64-70.
13
Cf. Roland Barthes, Die helle Kammer: Bemerkung zur Photographie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985);
Ernst H. Gombrich, Die Geschichte der Kunst (Köln: Phaidon, n.d.); Ernst H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (UK:
Phaidon Press, 16th ed. 2006).
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