The Great Depression
During the great depression several photographers were commissioned to go to the rural areas of america and capture propaganda images of the great depression.
Dorothea Lange
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).
The image above is the final image. Ive chosen here to present the other images below which where the process in which this image was captured. This is the final edited image. I say edited because the thumb of this lady was intact in the bottom right hand corner of the image holding onto the stick.
"Since these photographs were taken at the behest of the government, in order to support Government relief efforts, there's an obvious strategy involved to portray the Government in a very positive light. Not only the Government, more important than the Government, were the recipients of relief, so the most famous examples occur with the idealisation of the 'Dustbowl' refugees, for example, in the photography of Dorothea Lange. In the six photographs of the series, she proceeds to reduce the size of the family which is identified in her captions as seven people down to three young children, one of whom is an infant and thereby the family suddenly conforms to middle class standards on family size." (James Curtis, Photo-historian)"
Walker Evans
Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife,
Alabama Tenant Farmer
The aim of these great depression images were to show those 'back home' the pain and struggle these people were going through. Some of the images are rather shocking when you see images of large families with a lot of children dressed in dirty worn clothing. As you can see in the images i posted about by Dorothea Lange the final chosen image was the image were the children looked most distressed, turning away from the camera hugging into their mother, while the mother looks most distressed and concerned in this image over the others. The idea was to propose to the public during this hard time in rural america that this woman was a desirable mother, looking after several children, she was someone the public would feel an emotion connection to and look up to and feel sorry for.
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