The role of Dorothea Lange in the Great Depression

DOROTHEA LANGE AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Dorothea Lange accomplished both works of informing as a journalist and raising awarness as a social worker, using photojournalism.

Dorothea Lange was born on May 26, 1895, and she died on october 11, 1965. She was and american phtographer who played a key role in the documentation of the Great Depression period. Indeed, after the Wall Street crach of 1929, characterized by the Black Thursday on October 24, the country plunged into a nightmarish economical and social situation ; lots of people lost their jobs, leading to the number of 4 millions of unemployed in 1930, which was the quarter of the american population, to 12 millions in 1932.

 As the amercican soil, especially in the South,was also going trhough an extreme aridity that ruined most of the crops, the farmers became quickly impacted by a poverty, and thus in great need for work. This situation conducted most of them to migrate to California, which represented for the farmers the only hope to find jobs, as the state was calling for workforce. The novel The grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck published in 1939, illustrates well this phenomenon, following the Joads in this travel full of hopes for the future. Unfortunatly, there were more workforce than there were jobs, leading to a global desillusion.

It is this very situation that Dorothea Lange focused on in her informing work ; immersed in this rural america of the 30’s, she introduced photojournalism, as she did not describe the misery of farmers, but the social context through her photographs, letting the viewer imagining himself what they were going through. Realising photos such as Damaged child, in 1938, White Angel breadline, in 1933, or else, her most famous picture, Migrant Mother, in 1936, she managed to make her subjects both individuals, and representatives for bigger issues.

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