Dorothea Lange Analysis

You Have Seen Their Faces by Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell is a photo documentary of life in the South during the Great Depression. After reading You Have Seen Their Faces along with critiques of it by Rabinowitz and Snyder, I found myself more interested in the topic of how motherhood was depicted in the book. Rabinowitz brought up that middle class women felt the need to regulate the poor women because they weren 't feminine enough or motherly enough which is the main attitude involved in slumming. By observing Margaret Bourke-White’s photos I found two distinct classes of these types of images: positive and negative. I was curious as to the deeper meanings behind these two classes of photos and what this meant about Bourke-White’s perspective of her subjects. Another point of interest is how and if the captions of these photos of mothers cause the images to be interpreted differently.

Dorothea Dix was a woman who stood for the treatment and housing conditions of prisoners and the mentally ill.She observed and documented what she had seen and experienced. Her documentation changed her audiences minds and started the reform.

When initially looking at the iconic black and white photo, one sees a woman and two children. After closely examining the image, one sees the third child, an infant, being held by the woman.The woman is not looking directly at the camera, but the audience is able to see her gaze. The woman’s eyebrows are furrowed causing her face to appear as worried with a look of desperation. Looking more meticulously at the woman, one will notice that she has a slight frown. The woman is able to show her stress by using her right hand to pull down slightly on her face. Aside from the woman, there are three children in the photograph. Two of the children are facing away from the camera with their heads rested on the woman’s shoulder. The third child is an infant who seems to be sleeping while this photograph was taken. The woman and children in the photo are migrants that are trying to survive the Great Depression and

In the article, “Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression” by James C. Curtis, we understand what it takes to get the perfect photo to represent a message. Dorothea Lange became very popular during her time and is known especially for her photo, Migrant Mother, which documents life during the Great Depression. James C. Curtis does a good job explaining the artistic decisions to this most famous shot and how many different steps Lange took in order to really create a powerful message depicting life in poverty.

Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” depicts one of hundreds of similar cases of impoverished people during the Dustbowl that ravaged the American Midwest in the 1930’s. It was pictures like this one, windows into the souls of the disheartened and discarded, that brought about awareness and reform that eventually ended the Great Depression. Uniting one nation, this picture, and others like it, connects Americans to one another- not individuals, but one and indivisible. The photograph’s composition, narrative, and themes contribute to its purpose as a work of political protest as the mother represents a declining nation in dire need of change.

The author uses words like “worn, weather-beaten women, a look of desperation on her face” to evoke what the photo was like. Document A talks about the reason for why Lange wanted to photograph the mother from her point of view and also is presented with the reason for the photographs to be taken. The document doesn't clearly state a correct side or personal opinion on the photograph. It also doesn't give much information of the Migrant Mother herself as is does of Dorothea Lange. As a result of the photos, it created a negative connotation of the era.

Dorothea Puente was not always a Puente. She was born as Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California on January 9, 1929. Trudy Mae Yates, her mother, and Jesse James Gray, her father, according to Dorothea Puente, were alcoholics and abused her. Her father was a cotton-picker, and Puente claimed that her mother was a prostitute. However, how accurate is this information is debatable since Puente has been proven as a compulsive liar. She has lied about her life since she was young so as to make her seem more interesting to others and gain attention. When she was eight years old, her father died from tuberculosis in 1937. Her mother died a year later from a motorcycle accident in 1938. Left as an orphan at a very young age, she was sent to an

Imagine, if you can, being mentally ill in the 1840’s. You have been caged without any heat or locked up without clothing. Most of the time would have had painful physical restraints. All because of an illness you could not control. It wasn’t until a woman named Dorothea Dix was so appalled by these conditions that things started to change for those who were mentally ill. She spent over forty years of her life campaigning to get better care and living conditions for the insane and homeless.

To begin, Dorothea Dix was a key player in bettering the treatment for mentally ill patients.  In the mid-1800’s, many mentally inept people dwelled in prisons.  This was because the people of the time didn’t exactly know how to properly treat or deal with these mentally ill people.  Initially, Dix worked as a nurse and teacher for prisoners, where their living conditions were less than adequate (History.com Staff).  Altogether, seeing what was happening to these abused people made her feel as though she had to do something to help.  While working at the prison, she saw firsthand what these people had to face.  One of Dorothea Dix’s reports accounted that, “prisoners [were] flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused

This piece of art is supposed to be an interpretation of the Greek myth of Atlas. In this myth Atlas has to hold the world on his shoulders and in this drawing the young girl representing child labour is shown holding the world to support the greedy businessmen. It is believed to have been drawn by Lewis Wicks Hine. He worked as a photographer and was strongly against child labour. As a result of his focus, this drawing was probably made to show how unfair child labor was. Even though this was created in the early 20th century in America it reflects the same dynamic that was going on during the Victorian era. It has the same ideas that children made up most of the work force during the Industrial Revolution yet they were not fully compensated.

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.

Her most well know piece Migrant Mother which was of Florence Owens Thompson. The photograph shows a worn out mother with her two children's heads in her shoulders, and a baby in her lap.

Dorothea Lange is an experienced photographer, born on the 26th day of March 1895. Her works have been a source of insight for many people and this has proved very effective to contemporary photographers. There are many works that this woman did during her time and it is important to acknowledge them. Migrant Mother is one of these works and the applause that it has gotten from the viewers clearly portrays expertness at its best. The photo revolves around the life and family of one Florence Owens Williams and was taken in 1936 in California Florida. Going through the various elements of this photograph is effective in ensuring that one understands the deep concepts that revolve around it.

The portrait is displayed horizontally with a gold trimmed frame. The subject is a female that looks to be in her early 20’s sitting upright on a large brown chair. If the viewer travels up the painting the first indication of the woman’s class is her satin, blue dress. The saturated blue shines and falls in the light like water. Paired with the dress are her exceptionally detailed endings to her sleeves. The lace is even painted as though it is translucent, allowing a little of the blue dress to show through the sleeve. Flowers throughout history have symbolized innocence of a woman and her virginity. The repeating theme of flowers, in the sleeve cuffs and ribbon) in the woman’s attired suggests her purity or innocent nature. Another very details section of the painting includes the corset/torso details. The sewing suggests texture in the torso with small beading in between. Towards the top of the chest in the center, the female seems to bear an extravagant, ribbon piece with a tear drop bead in the center. The light pink

Sally Mann’s style incorporates black and white photographs of her children, which are presented with “ordinary moments of childhood, suspended in time and transformed into aesthetic objects, takes on a distorted, even uncanny quality” (Arnason and Mansfield 719). Sally Mann photographed The New Mothers in 1989. This photograph’s most dominant elements are value and space. Having the photographs black and white really enhances the visibility of values. Most of Mann’s work is outside and has a define depth of field to blur out the background and emphasize the focus of the children. This compositional style helps to identify the high and low key values within the photos. The clothes, the reflection of the sun on the girls’ hair, and the girls fair skin are the part of the image that show high-key values, while the rest of the photo in more middle and low-key values. The intense depth of field increases a feeling of space for the viewer. In the photo you can see that the two young girls and their stroller is all in a line horizontally. Behind the girls you can notice they are outside in a open area because of the blurred grass and trees behind them. This photograph’s most dominant principles are movement and variety. The depth of field and lack of distraction in the background of the photo allows your eye to focus and move around with the subjects in the photo. The height of the subjects forms a triangle shape, which is