It Could Be Worse

This is a very timely post. I had actually drafted this post last week and intended on posting it tonight. Today at work, some of my co-workers and friends were laid off. This post is not in relation to that event.

From 1935–1944, the Farm Security Administration (FSA)-Office of War Information (OWI) took on an extensive U.S. government photography project. This project was a pictorial record of American life during these years. In total, the collection consists of approximately 171,000 black-and-white film negatives, 107,000 black-and-white photographic prints, and 1,610 color transparencies. I had never heard about this collection until I was doing research for work a couple months ago. I felt like I had won the lottery once I discovered the photos available from the Library of Congress Web site. I spent hours perusing the images. Below are some of the most famous images that were photographed by Dorthea Lange. I know you'll recognize the first photo. Last week as I was thinking about friends and loved ones who are going through difficult financial times, the image of this mother's face kept coming to my mind. It could be worse...

Caption: Destitute peapickers in California; 

a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936.

Mother's name: Florence Owens Thompson

Caption: These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. 

Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute.

In 1960, Lange gave this account of her experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence of my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.