Most photographs on this website have been made by Dorothea Lange and show people in the United States at the time of the Great Depression (1935-1939).
Only a few decades before that time poor people in the Netherlands still lived in turf huts and in Italy even in the 1950's people still lived in "borries", a kind of stone igloo. In the 19th century living conditions of labourers were bitter throughout Europe. Only a small elite lived well.
In our time we don't normally realize how much former generations
suffered to pass life on to us. In our own culture we are rarely
confronted with such grave poverty, exploitation, child mortality,
death in childbirth, etc. But those historic circumstances continue to
affect families in the present time.
"Hands off! I do not molest what I photograph, I do not meddle and I do not arrange." That was one of the principles of American photographer Dorothea Lange, whose work has provided one of the most committed social documentaries of photography in our century.
As a young girl, Dorothea Lange got polio, which caused her life long difficulties in walking, something that, according to Lange, shaped her concern with the suffering of others.
Following her studies at Columbia University in New York under Clarence H. White between 1917 and 1919, Dorothea Lange started out as an independent portrait photographer in San Francisco. Shocked by the number of homeless people in search of work during the Great Depression, she decided to take pictures of people in the street to draw attention to their plight. In 1935 she joined the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and reported on living conditions in the rural areas of the USA.
In an unflinchingly direct manner she documented the bitter poverty of migrant workers and their families. Dorothea Lange's pictures not only showed the hopelessness and despair, but also the pride and dignity with which people endured their circumstances. One of the most famous and most frequently published photographs of the FSA project is Migrant Mother, the portrait of a Californian migrant worker with three of her children. The face of the young woman is marked by wrinkles, the gaze full of worry directed in the distance. To the right and left the two older children, seeking protection, lean against her shoulders, hiding their faces from the camera, while the small baby has fallen asleep on its mother's lap. This highly concentrated, tightly composed image has made Dorothea Lange an icon of socially committed photography.
From: 20th Century Photography.
A link to the 3934 photographs made by Dorothea Lange for the Californian
Farm Security Administration, selected from the database mentioned below:
3934 photographs by Dorothea Lange
A link to the database with 160.000 photographs about the Great Depression
that were made for the Californian Farm Security Administration:
America from the Great Depression to World War II
Black-and-White Photographs from the FSA-OWI
1935-1945.
Collection of 160.000 black and white photographs.
160.000 photographs about the Great Depression
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