Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother Summary

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.

Dorothea Lange became a well-known photographer with pictures of the Dust Bowl. According to Garland 2003 her photography obtained government relief for Dust Bowl migrants because she “visually demonstrated the hunger, poverty, hardship, and the plight of the migrants.”

Dorothea Lynde Dix is a famous woman in history that has been commemorated for her many helpful contributions to the world. Throughout her life span, she singlehandedly bestowed her assistance to individuals, states, and even full countries. She is known for many small, well-rounded triumphs but when summed up, all equate to a large portion of kind, beneficial deeds and charitable works. Dorothea Dix left an impact on the world through her efforts of sharing her teachings with others, the treatment and care of the mentally ill, and with her nursing in the Union army.

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 an American activist who pushed for reforms for the treatment of the insane after visiting several insane asylums during the 1800’s. While visiting, Dix noticed several things that led to her fight for the proper treatment for the mentally ill. One was discovering that patients in insane asylums were treated far worse compared to prisoners, who deliberately committed crimes on their own behalf. Another was finding out that several people in insane asylums were just thrown in there for reasons that were easy to treat, like depression. A third was witnessing several disturbing accounts, like finding patients chained in filthy cold cells, mentally ill women locked away with rapists and murderers,

New photographers and journalists began to document imagery of everyday life and the hardship through the Dustbowl and The Great Depression. A famous photographer is Dorothea Lange. One picture that is famous by her is called "Migrant Mother," showed a gaunt young widow holding her three daughters, her careworn face suggesting that hope was running out. Dorothea Lange was working under Working under Roy Stryker, primarily under the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a small group of talented photographers, including Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Russell Lee, and Arthur Rothstein, documented the human, natural, and economic devastation of the region in photographs printed in federal publications as well as in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. Another famous documentor portraying the world around us was John Steinbeck. He wrote a set of newspaper articles that year depicting in similar terms what Dorothea Lange’s photographs show. (Gregory,

It consists of an array of artworks, pictures, and photographs along with verbal description of the various conditions of the working class during the great depression starting from the events which led to various riots and violent acts by the working class and a clash between the capitalist class, government, and the working class (M. Elizabeth Boone, 2006). It depicts the California Labor School’s establishment; workers’ disenfranchisement from the service economy; movement of farm workers; and the demographics of the workers changing. The photographs depicted are of Tina Modotti, Otto Hagel, Dorothea Lange, and Emmanuel Joseph while paintings are of Hung Liu and Diego Rivera. The book consists of five chapters taking the audience through the journey of the working class during the great depression (M. Elizabeth Boone,

Dorothea Lange was an employee of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). It was a program designed during the Great depression to raise awareness of and provide aid to impoverished farmers. It was created in 1937 under the Department of Agriculture, helped with rural rehabilitation, farm loans, and subsistence homestead programs. The FSA was not a relief agency, but instead it relied on a network of cooperation between states and county offices to determine which clients needed loans that could not get this credit somewhere else. One of the most memorable programs of the FSA is the collection of photographs that document the rural conditions from the Information Division of the Resettlement Administration. These photos helped to not only promote

In 1935 photojournalist Dorothea Lange was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration, which sought to improve the lives of sharecroppers, migrants, and displaced tenant farmers, to document the lives of people of the Dust Bowl. Although her most famous photos like Migrant Mother and White Angel Breadline are portraits, Lange also photographed many signs and billboards, comparing the text and images on the billboards with the reality migrants faced. Although these photos are not well known, and are relatively simple in composition, when paired with other photos in the Dust Bowl series they reveal how large corporations’ treatment of migrants had corrupted American Pride.

Dorothea Lange was born May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey, was an American photojournalist and documentary photographer. Her most recognizable work was from the "Depression-era for the Farm Security Administration (FSA)" (Dorothea). With her photographs it brought an open eye to the nation about how bad the Great Depression really was. Her work in these areas of photography develop the way we see photojournalism today.

As photography was being used more and more as a method of documentation, they were among the first to use it to push social reform efforts. They closely documented the devastating effects of industrialization and urbanization on the working-class American. Through their work they brought attention to the need for housing and (child) labor laws. They used their medium to bring real proof to the public and legislators, where it needed to be seen. Actually, instead of documentary photography, it may best be called social reform photography, as they both worked tirelessly and used the medium to force attention and to effect social change.

Taylor hired Lange because of her honesty she showed in her style of photos and because she felt passionate about her work, which is parallel to what Coles states: a document is done with the bias of the documentarian. Another source that strongly supports and illuminates Coles thoughts about Lange and human actuality is Louis Gawthrop’s article: “Her fears are our fears, her visions, our visions, her images, our images--of the homeless, the poor, the ever-growing, functionally illiterate underclass, the continuing fragmentation of the family, the evil of discrimination, and the steady erosion of the human capacity to love one's neighbor” (64). Lange feels very badly for the children, and wants to do whatever she can to portray the sadness and despair occurring during the dustbowl era. Lange snaps a photo at a specific angel, with optimal lighting, having the subjects pose to her command, to create a story that Lange imagines in her head when looking through the lenses. All of the latter are constructed with her own thoughts of what sadness, starvation, and desperation are. As I mentioned in the introduction, Coles says that human actuality is a clear product of the documentarian. Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans are both credited for their documentary work.

This report will give historical information about Dorothea Lange, who photographed the “face” of the Great Depression. The project will audit her early life and photographs. It will also examine her role during the Great Depression. Dorothea Lange took pictures of anything that caught her eye, which is why her photographs do not have a particular classification. If her technique did have a vague analysis, it would be social realism, which is a style of painting, used in the 1930s, in which the scenes showed political protest.

Cinema is an extremely powerful and important artistic tool that reveals significant amounts about the perception society, or certain groups have on specific types of people. By looking at how Jewish immigrant mothers have been represented through films between 1927 and 1956, one can understand society’s perception of her as a central figure amongst newly settled Jews in America. Between 1880 and 1920 more than 2 million Jews immigrated to the US (Hant 1), in search for a more prosperous and enjoyable life. Many believed that the US would guarantee new opportunities and that they would be able to escape the anti-Semitism that

This story is about a time called poverty or better known as the Great depression.It was a time when it was extremely hard to be stable there were jobs but there were not enough jobs and the jobs that there were were not paying enough which caused the depression. Because of all this people didn't work as hard making it so work wasn't getting finished it was harder to make money a lot of people did not have food it was just genuinely a depressing time where no one thought it was worth it to do anything.The story was about how this guy named Lange took a picture of a woman.This woman was suffering from the depression the critics are arguing that what Lange did his look for someone who looks like there suffering and take a picture she did not