A Picture Can Tell Us

Taking photographs may seem simple, but being a photographer is more than browsing through the viewfinder and pushing the exposure button. A photographer needs to know how to analyze the scene, speak in words that language cannot, and reach to the souls of people through a picture. During the Great Depression, many photographers captured the scenes of poverty and grief. However, there was only one photographer that truly captured the souls of Americans. According to Roy Stryker, Dorothea Lange "had the most sensitivity and the most rapport with people" (Stryker and Wood 41). Dorothea Lange was a phenomenal photographer that seized the hearts of people during the 1930s and beyond, and greatly affected the times of the Great Depression.

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.

People lost the ability to pay for things they once owned. People bought many things on margin in the years before the depression, they soon found this to be a rather unwise practice as they could no longer afford these purchases once the depression hit. Millions were out a job, and soon their homes followed; foreclosed on by the banks, the items they once purchased sold back. This left many families with little possessions and even fewer places to turn to and many ended up in shanty towns and Hoovervilles. There they lived out of cars and in makeshift tents like the family in picture 5. These places were overrun with undernourished people that rarely had their basic human needs

Life during the Great Depression was very different from life today. Many people were living on the streets in shanties, which were houses made of cardboard and scraps of wood. Milk and sugar were luxuries; you couldn’t buy them unless you were very wealthy. Often, men tried to sell apples in the street, just to make a few cents. Unemployment was a giant problem during the 30s. By 1933, Canada’s unemployment rate was at 30%. One in five Canadians were dependent on government relief to sustain their lives.

During the 1930’s,a whole decade was full of dust bowl’s which were causing people to lose everything and becoming poor.The plains were where the dust bowls started spreading to countries like Kansas,Oklahoma,Texas and New Mexico.The dust bowls would kill off all the crops and leave areas with drought.people would start moving out of the countries and others would stay.

Photography is everywhere in this World today. Advancements throughout the 1930’s where emotions were extremely impacted, helped to set the base for future advancements and ideas that would lie ahead for generations to come. The impact that photography had on the United States during the Great Depression in a time of dire struggle was unlike any other. This movement was able to document images that may never be able to be matched again in its uniqueness and emotional

The first thing I will write about is a person, Jacob Riis. A esteemed author of the book “How the other half Lives”, published in the 1890s. Riis was a pioneer in the time when photography was first starting to catch on. In Riis’s photos he took pictures of people who lived in the slums of the major cities and how they lived. He was termed a Muckraker by our late president Theodore Roosevelt, because journalists like him would, as he would say, rake through all the good things and bad on the ground and only report the bad of the world. But Riis was one of the men of his era

The 1930s were seasons of extensive hardship on the Great Plains. Settlers managed with the Great Depression, as well as with years of droughts that dove an already suffering society into an attack of tireless dust storms that lasted for months. The Dust bowl conveyed an enormous agrarian and monetary hit to the Great Plains and destroyed what was left of the United States Economy during the Great Depression. It continued for a decade, 1930 to 1939, and wrecked ranches and lives all over Texas, Oklahoma panhandles, Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Canada, and Kansas. Monstrous dust storms wrecked pretty much everything from harvests, overwhelming ranches, in such a way it crushed the income and careers of thousands of farmers.

For some, 1920s - 1930s were times of prosperity and growth, whereas it was a disaster for others. Economically speaking, there were a lots of ups and downs during the period of 1920s-1930s, people witnessed unexpected circumstances. On the other hand, new cultures found their way in. The economy in 1920s was stronger compared to that of 1930s, whereas, both in 1920s and 1930s, African American life style improved. The economy in 1920s was much more stronger and people felt confident about their lifestyle and living conditions.

Life in the U.S. during the 1930s wasn’t easy for many Americans. This was the time of the Great depression. Many people lost their jobs and it became hard to have a healthy and supported family. The Dust Bowl did not help anyone during this time as people were already weak and sick the dust storms brought more tragedy to many families. The Dust Bowl had a huge impact on Migrant farmers. Due to the Dust Bowl turning most land into desert like land most farmers migrated to California but that didn’t seem to help many.

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

During the 1930s, The Great Depression and the Dustbowl were ruining a lot of things, including farmer’s way of life. The Dustbowl caused many farmers to sell their farms, the fewer farms, the less opportunities there are for migrant workers to make money. With the money they made, they couldn’t take care of themselves all that well. Even kids had to work just as much as adults, and barely made any money to get away from that line of work. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men portrays how migrant farm workers attempted to achieve success, but success was made nearly impossible due to the Great Depression.

Have you ever wondered what the south in the 1930's in the U.S. was like? It was not pleasant. Racism and Segregation were a huge problem. If you were colored, you basically didn’t have any freedom. On top of that, there were man-made disasters that led the country into panic. The time period was miserable and many people suffered from being unemployed and poor. This is the South in the 1930's.

Dorothea Lange’s pictures of the homeless during the Great Depression got the attention of the Federal Resettlement Administration. She began to work for them taking pictures and capturing the publics attention of the poor. She also worked for the US Farm Security Administration before World War Two. She investigated the conditions of farm workers in many Western states. Many of the people she photographed during this time had came to escape the “Dust Bowl” (a drought which devastated millions of acres of farm land in midwestern states).

     With the continually worsening conditions, and the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the United States was thrown into the biggest economical disaster of our history. Everyone, excluding the rich upper class, became poor and most unemployed. The majority of the American populace found themselves living in ‘shantytowns’ or ‘Hoovervilles’ as they later became to be known, which consisted of many cramped shacks constructed from whatever was available. This meant old burnt-out cars, cardboard boxes, random pieces of lumber, and anything else that people could find. Times truly were tough. It was a daily