Walker Evans-FSA Photography

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.

While many photos in You Have Seen Their Faces depict life in the south in negative light, there are a few photos that contradict this sentiment. While reading the book I found many photos that placed their subjects in a positive light and most of them happened to center around motherhood. These images portrayed the mothers as strong and determined in the face of adversity.

Alex Kotlowitz met Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers in 1985 while working as a journalist. He was interviewing them for a photo essay in Chicago magazine on children living in poverty. The violence that occurred every day where the brothers lived in Governor Henry Horner Homes, or Horner, disturbed Kotlowitz. Lafeyette and Pharoah are 12 and 9 years old at the start of the book but have experienced more than many kids their age. The boys did not seem sure of what life held for them. Lafeyette told Kotlowitz, “If I grow up, I’d like to be a bus driver,” Lafeyette was not sure that he would grow up at just 10 years old (x). Kotlowitz wanted to show what it is like for children growing up in urban poverty after seeing the brothers’

The Great Depression was a time of poverty, unemployment, stress, frustration, and of course depression. During that era, many had known and heard about the depression. It wasn’t until a photojournalist, Dorothea Lange, had taken the pictures of a defeated worn out mother, that people had an accurate visual of the Depression. The picture was known as the Migrant Mother. Seeing it with their eyes, many saw a new different perspective of that era.

Depicted in the picture, “Bud Fields and his family”, the family of six produce a couple of emotions that people in today’s era can clearly feel. Walker Evan’s depiction of life and the people during the Depression of the 1930’s is empty , ashamed, and hopeful. An example of why this family feels empty is because in the photograph the family is shown as poor and torn. For instance the grandmother is the only one that is wearing shoes, but the shoes are falling apart and her hands look as if she has been working non-stop. The mother has the hands of a labor worker, which goes to show that she is helping provide for the family along with the grandmother and the father. Underneath the bed is kitten which is clearly malnourished, which is a perfect

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,

As the United States sank into the Great Depression, a photographer named Dorothea Lange turned her attention away from studio and portrait work toward the suffering she was seeing around her. On the day that she took Migrant Mother, in Nipomo, California, Lange had just begun her journey home to San Francisco when she saw a roadside sign reading ‘PEA-PICKERS CAMP’. She initially ignored it, but after travelling twenty miles she turned around and drove back to the camp, where she approached a woman whom she has described as a ‘hungry and desperate mother’ and took six photographs of her and her children, moving closer to them each with each shot. In 1938 Lange retouched the negative for this image/ Lange chose to partially remove the image of the woman’s thumb on the stick to the right. In the title Lange knew little or nothing of the women so she chose to name it Migrant Mother.

Walters Evan’s depiction of life and the people during the depression of the 1930s is abandoned, overwhelmed, and depressed. For instance, the person wearing the suit and a hat seems overwhelmed or exhausted. He is about to collapse from all that is going on in his life. The man seems to be searching for jobs in a newspaper article because his old job went out of business due to the stock market crash during the 30s. Since he lost his job with the other few men aside him in despair as well as he is, the man is overwhelmed with what he has to do to maintain that his family is going to be okay, safe, and watched over as he tries to search for a well maintained job that’ll meet his needs. They’re posture in the picture shows that they are depressed

"Although there was evening brightness showing through the windows of the bunkhouse, inside it was dust". This shows that the light tries to get in but never manages to penetrate the darkness. This is important to the themes of the story because workers' hope for a future farm is just like the light while the cruel reality is like the darkness. Their efforts to realize this plan is just like the light trying to penetrate the darkness, but their dream

Walter Evan’s depiction of life and the people during the depression of the 1930’s consist of poverty, love, and dedication. In the picture of Bud fields and his family, they almost look poor. That can be depicted by looking at the ratty clothes, them having no shoes and the only small room that’s holding six people while one woman looks pregnant. Because of that said it portrays a depressed expression on the faces along with tired and worn out. While that’s been pointed out, it can be drawn that they value the word family and love and are close together. They all look like something towards helping the family. The value and love that goes towards this family is shown in the picture by the pictures and shelf of nick-knacks on the back wall.

Fortune Magazine, in July and August of 1936, sent James Agee and Walker Evans to research a story on sharecropping. In the preface of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee describes it as “a curious piece of work.” They were to produce “an article on cotton tenantry in the United States, in the form of a photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers,” (IX). James Agee and Walker Evans set out to write and photograph an article for a magazine, and ended up experimenting with the form of the novel itself.

Question: In what ways did Mathew Brady change people’s perception of the Civil War? This investigation evaluates the ways in which photographer Mathew Brady changed the American perception of the Civil War. The focus of the investigation is on the growth of photography during the Civil War, a small bit of background on Mathew Brady, and his involvement on the battlefield as a “battlefield photographer”. The technological advancements in photography during the Civil War are noted in this investigation. Also, connections between the advancements in early photography and how Mathew Brady used these advancements to change the public perception of the War are explored. Different

During the presidential reign of Hebert Hoover in the early 1930's, America was hit with a severe economic slowdown which was notoriously known as The Great Depression. During this time of crisis, an estimated sixteen million people were left unemployed and many others were left homeless. Even though it was expected that many industries in the United States would be significantly affected as a result of the crash, it was Agriculture that was destroyed. Many landowners were desperate to employ workers on their farm, whilst workers were anxious themselves to find a job to support their family. In this story, two displaced Anglo migrant ranch workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, travel around America in search for a job. We soon realise

Beginning in the year 1929, America began its plummeting descent into one the worst economic times in the history of our country. By the early 1930’s, up to fifteen million working Americans had been laid off work. Throughout homes all across the nation, dismayed workers had to tell their loved ones in humiliating defeat that they no longer had the means to provide for their families. The raw emotions shown directly in Walker Evans’s depiction of life and people are powerlessness, pridefulness, as well as hopefulness. An example of powerlessness is the lack of shoes shown in the picture.

The apartment is very small and lacks much sunlight. The small window in their apartment is the only window, and that is where they get the little bit of sunlight in their home, which barely gets through. This small window is a symbol because even with all of the problems and struggles the Younger family goes through, that little bit of sunlight makes it in through the small window. This symbolizes the little bit of hope there is for things to get better and them to get out of the bad situations they go through. This small window helps the audience see the Younger family’s