Traveling through the United States, Dorothea Lange took eminent photos of migrant families suffering in the Dust Bowl. She was one of the most influential photographers of her time. Lange gave the Dust Bowl a new outlook to American citizens and generations to come. The reasons for this new outlook were she felt a connection to the people she captured. The migrants she tooks photos of are like those shown throughout the novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Lange’s significance of her artwork, migrant workers, and living conditions, are all subjects that shaped the Dust Bowl and how we see it today. During the Dust Bowl, Dorothea Lange’s photos captured the significance of the time. Lange’s photos gave a whole new outlook on the Dust Bowl.
America was visually shown how bad the Dust Bowl truly was. “The latter agency, established by the U.S. Agriculture Department, hoped that Lange’s powerful images would bring the conditions of the rural poor to the public’s attention” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1). Her photos had the powerful effect that they were hoping for on American citizens. They impacted people like no other photographers work before. In some way everyone that saw her photos was affected by them. Lange, herself, was also affected by her photographs. “Although she was not in any conventional sense a politically oriented person, and her own community was primarily one of artists, she felt not only great sympathy but also intense outrage at the injustices she saw”(Gordon 1).
Lange saw how the Dust Bowl affected people of not only different ethnicities but also people of different ages. Her photos showed how the Dust Bowl impacted everyone even during a time when there was still racial discrimination in a lot of cities. “She made many insightful and respectful pictures of blacks, Filipinos, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, although these were reproduced much less than her photographs of whites” (Gordon 1). Even though Lange took the same type of photos of workers from different ethnicities, the rest of the country focused more on the photographs of white people.
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When Lange was taking the photos she never had them pose. Lange would take her photos of the migrants while they were going about their day. She felt for the migrants and how much they struggled. “She believed that her disability gave her an almost telepathic connection with those who suffered”(Gordon 1). Because Lange was diagnosed with polio, she felt similar suffering as the migrants because of her disease. “Migrant Mother” is one of Lange’s most well known art pieces. The “Migrant Mother” is well known because it showed that the Dust Bowl affected families and their suffering.
Lange stated:I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or 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 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed.(Migrant Mother)To American citizens seeing a mother with her children made the effects of the Dust Bowl seem a hundred times more real than before. People, after seeing this photo, felt like they had to help in some way.
The “Migrant Mother” shows a mother supporting her children through the tough times even though she doesn’t know what the future will hold for them. “Ma wiped her hands on the dish towel and she squatted down in front of her daughter, and she put her two hands on Rose of Sharon’s hair. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said. ‘You always was a good girl. I’ll take care a you. Don’t you fret”(Steinbeck 230). The mother is comforting her daughter after she started crying. This shows that even though the mother may be struggling on the inside, she is a rock for her children on the outside. America saw how strong the migrants had to be during times of despair.
The photo of the mother supporting her children showed that if they stick together they can get through anything. It inferred to America, that if the country stays united and supported each other they could get through the Dust Bowl. Lange’s artwork gave a whole new outlook on the Dust Bowl and the struggles that farmers and workers went through. Migrants traveled far to find work, so they could sustain their lives. Lange would travel with these migrants from state to state all around the summer, capturing their hardship they were suffering from (Gordon 1).
Living through the Dust Bowl was arduous, especially finding jobs. It was brutal working in this time, especially for Paul Schuster Taylor. He hired Dorothea Lange to accompany him to expose the ferocious working and living conditions as a migrant farm worker (Gordon 1). Illustrating the way immigrants lived, Steinbeck gives a visual in the novel The Grapes of Wrath: In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water.
And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country (130-131). However finding new land was difficult. Incidentally the land was either taken over, dried up or hated by the Americans. Lange captured the real struggles that the migrant workers went through and showed the low mural of the whole Dust Bowl.
In the 1930’s, the living conditions were horrendous. When the Dust Bowl hit, the land became cracked. Forcing problems for farmers because it was a source to live. “Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust” (Steinbeck 2). Most men would abandon their families because they couldn’t provide food. If the men of the families couldn’t help, what was the point of being with them still. Men don’t want to show their children why he has failed them. Willingly not showing their face again was the best option. Steinbeck also mentioned when the rain hit the ground, craters would form in the dust. A speck would touch the corn, but that was it (1).
Living in the Dust Bowl got scarce. Dorothea Lange would capture moments of migrants, families, etc. suffering. She would capture migrants starving in a period of scarcity, resources were little to nothing and high percentage living in tents (1). Families, farmers and migrants traveled to the west to find job opportunities. By doing this, they had to leave all of their possessions behind to make it in life.The Dust Bowl was a very tragic time in America. Many people suffered during this period and some didn’t make it out of this economical crisis. Farmers and workers had to travel west to escape the dust and had to live in despair, until they got to a place where they could find work. Lange was there to capture photos of their despair and she did it in a memorable way. Lange’s significance of her artwork, migrant workers, and living conditions, are all subjects that shaped the Dust Bowl of how we see it today.
