The Farm Security Administration: Dorothea Lange

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.

To begin with, Lange helped perceive the poor living conditions of the 1900’s through her photo of the migrant mother and three children. For instance, Lange with her photo of the migrant mother helped raise awareness, for the federal government gave the pea pickers camp, where the migrant mother had been distinguished, “twenty thousand pounds of food”. (Starr 48) The photo of the unfortunate pea pickers helped people realize how hopeless they really were. This creating a willingness to help. Showing Lange's photography ability to create empathy through a simple photo. In addition, the mother was so desperate for help that when the picture was taking place, “there she sat in the lean-to-tent” motionless. (Starr 47) The migrant mother was so

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.”

The Federal Art Project was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression in 1929 through 1943. One of the great programs of the FAP was established by nearly 100 community art centers that provided art classes for children and new artists. Having made previous attempts such as ‘Public Works of Art Project’ which lasted from 1933-1934, Roosevelt was inspired to create the Works Progress Administration. During the mid 1930s, the US had still been at the center of the Great Depression, with an effort to give people economic relief, Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, which was created under Federal Project One. The Federal Art Project was designed to enhance the incomes of artists’ and fund patriotic art projects to try and rally disheartened Americans.

Dorothea would be contacted by a professor who said that they had a grant from the state of California to investigate agricultural labor, and he wanted Visual support in the form of photographs. This would grow to become her most famous work. She traveled the dust bowl and California’s imperial valley, documenting through photographs and captions the life and daily struggles of migrant agricultural workers. Her photographs helped to raise funds for these workers and their families by being published in newspapers and requesting donations. Many of her photos were set up so the families would appear as in despair and desperate as possible. By doing this, it maximized the emotion felt by the photographs viewers. Dorothea Lange was one of the most influential people of the Great Depression, and her work helped to spur the America’s “war on poverty and

Dorothea Lange’s started her career with “street photography” as the depression occured. Later, capturing these “harsh” pictures was a part of her job as she worked for the Farm Security Administration (The Making). Dorothea was a sociological researcher and tied her photography work into her research. She did not want these pictures to represent only a tragic time in history but also, something much more meaningful. Not only did she take these pictures, she would ask the homeless questions about their personal life and get to know them.

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).

Photographer Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 26, 1895, and died October 11, 1965 in San Francisco, California. She studied photography at Columbia University and worked at a New York portrait studio until 1918 when she began to travel. Stranded in San Francisco, she continued doing studio work during the 1920’s. With her husband, the painter Maynard Dixon, she traveled the southwest, photographing Native Americans. She believed that the camera could teach people “how to see without a camera.” The social disruption brought on by the Great Depression led Lange to take her camera into the streets where she documented the suffering of the homeless in breadlines and on labor strikes.

In 1937 under the Department of Agriculture created a program to help with rural rehabilitation, farm loans, and subsistence homestead programs which was called the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Farm Security Administration program was created by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression in hopes of bringing the country out of it using innovative programs. FSA was created to give aid to the poor farmers during the Great Depression and help them become self-sustained. The Information Division of the Resettlement Administration of FSA had a program that documents the rural conditions through photographs. The photos helped show culture, landscapes and the people of rural America and it also helped promote FSA.

Dorothea Lange was commissioned to take a series of photographs on behalf of the Farm Security Administration and Resettlement

I find the photographs taken by Dorothea Lange to be the most compelling graphically of the sets reviewed. Her photos really portray the desperation of the citizens put out of work at the time, and their willingness to do whatever was necessary to survive and support their families. In most of her shots, you can see malnourished children and families, looking destitute and hopeless. The dead expressions on the faces of many of the women pictured are incredibly telling about the hardships they are facing. Furthermore, the gaunt man hitchhiking with his wife and child shows that he endures hunger so that his family can eat at least a little. These pictures also tell a story of the distrust of the photographer by the subjects, especially the women, the children don’t care. The children in the photos are wearing tattered clothing and playing with whatever is at hand, sticks or rocks instead of manufactured toys. The places depicted give the appearance of being hot, dry and bleak, having little to no vegetation. Moreover, the housing is mostly temporary and very

Max Yavno was born in New York City on April 26, 1911. After acquiring his Bachelor of Social Science from City College in New York, he attended the School of Business Administration at Columbia University. A year later he enrolled in the political science graduate program at Columbia. In 1935, he briefly worked as a social worker for the New York City Home Relief Bureau. His photographing career did not start until 1936 when he started working for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theater Project. With no previous experience, Yavno

Almost a quarter of the population was unemployed in 1933, but the photograph was taken in 1936, so the mother, and possibly father’s employment is unknown. The family’s house is not in good condition, but that does not say anything about the family’s employment status. The photograph also gives no information about the children’s education. There is nothing in the picture to suggest anything about whether the boy or girl are attending school. No conclusions can be made about the family’s living situation compared to others in the area. Are there other families in the area living in extreme poverty? While there likely are because of how widespread the effects of the great depression were, the photograph gives does not give any information on the

What I have learned about the migrant family is that subsequently entitled Migrant Mothers, Lang's photograph has become not only the best-known image of the 270,00 plus negatives assembled by her Resettlement /Farm security Administration team, but no one of the the most universally recognized and appreciated photographs of all time this is what I´v learned from the Migrant Mother. I also, agree with the idea that Dorothea Lange´s photographed the woman and her family from a detached perspective in the woman and her three children, stranded in a roadside canvas lean-to such critics suggest, Lange found a subject for her photographic art that is a subject removed in time. In March 1936 after a month in the field Lange was heading north to San

In the early 20th century, Americans were suffering from the Great Depression and its high unemployment rates, droughts and terrible living conditions, so when they first saw the series of photographs by Dorothea Lange, including the Migrant Mother, they were in awe of how it captured their situation, as well as their beliefs, perfectly. Not only did they represent the people as “dignified human beings whose plight would elicit sympathy, not ridicule,” Lange’s photos captured the idea that “Poverty was a distressing matter…, not an embarrassing one,” simply by photographing people on the streets they were living on, filming them in their element. People were in pain and just by taking photos of this problem, with some modifications and positioning, Lange’s art “became a tireless and universal symbol of suffering in the face of adversity” with its portrayal of regular people in dire situations. What also made the photos as popular as it was, and still is, is how they reference “fundamental and historic religious symbolism,” especially the Migrant Mother whose imagery of a woman tirelessly caring for her children alludes to the similar historical representations of Madonna and her child, Jesus Christ. While beloved for the realism of her