Poor mother and children during the Great Depression. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, USA.Gordon and many others have pointed out that Lange's documentary photography was, to a large extent, portrait photography. She treated the poor with as much respect as she had her rich clients, during her years as a successful portrait photographer in San Francisco. And she found the beauty in them, just as she had with the rich.
This photo forces us to remember that people retain their full humanity, even in the midst of misery. We need to see both of these photos (and to remember the father's tender gesture of washing his child's face) before we can even begin to understand this young mother and her children.
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) has been called America's greatest documentary photographer. She is best known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. Below are 42 pre-World War II photographs she created for the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) investigating living conditions of farm workers and their families in Western states such as California. Most of the workers had come west to escape the Dust Bowl, the lengthy drought which devastated millions of acres of farmland in Midwestern states such as Oklahoma.
It is heart breaking to see that the mother can not give her children more, i know that she want to give her children the best but cant because f there situation. Most families were like this one in the picture, not being able to provide many opportunities for their children.
ReplyDeleteThis goes to show the level of poverty in which the families lived. The houses look as if they may collapse at any moment and the children are barefoot.
ReplyDeleteThe way the family is dressed and the filth on their clothes makes them immensely vulnerable to pneumonia and lung diseases especially being a poor family.
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