by Lesley Rigg

Created on: July 08, 2011

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. - The Dust Bowl Through the Lens: How Photography Revealed and Helped Remedy a National Disaster, "FDR’s New Deal army of photographers took to the roads during this national crisis to document the human struggle of the proud people of the plains. Their pictures spoke a thousand words, and a new form a storytelling—photojournalism—was born.         

Amongst these photographers were Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, both credited with producing some of the most heart-rending and iconic images of the era, achieving what Roosevelt wanted and more. 

Lange’s most famous picture was that of the Migrant Mother (1936).  Found on a pea picking farm, Lange shot the woman in a ragged tent with her children around her, exhausted and dirty.  If you see the original photograph it isn’t half so haunting, although truly wretched for the family, the Lange’s ability to crop, colour and print the photograph in such a way to bring out the premature aging of the still young 30 something woman and desperation is testament to her skill to speak to the viewer and ram home hard the story that these people were living.

Walker Evans, although less emotionally investing in his subjects was prolific in his work recording the lives of ordinary people, perhaps one of the first times that the little people’s experience of the world had been documented in such a way. 

As the article the Power of Photography in Socialism Today, Issue 50, Sept 2000 stated “The work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans illustrates a vital role performed by the documentary photograph: its power to instill a profound awareness of patterns of life and culture independent of, and often distanced from, the viewer who may occupy a totally different (and frequently more privileged) socio-economic strata”.

The unique medium of photography could not be argued with, and although the veracity of photography could and would be called into question over time, in terms of setting up of scenes, the sheer visceral quality and numbers of photographs saying similar things about the plight of the rural poor in the US broke apart the idea of the American Dream and forced government and those who voted for them to continue to fund the various New Deal initiatives that Roosevelt felt were necessary.

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