Taking photographs may seem simple, but being a photographer is more than browsing through the viewfinder and pushing the exposure button. A photographer needs to know how to analyze the scene, speak in words that language cannot, and reach to the souls of people through a picture. During the Great Depression, many photographers captured the scenes of poverty and grief. However, there was only one photographer that truly captured the souls of Americans. According to Roy Stryker, Dorothea Lange "had the most sensitivity and the most rapport with people" (Stryker and Wood 41). Dorothea Lange was a phenomenal photographer that seized the hearts of people during the 1930s and beyond, and greatly affected the times of the Great Depression.
Dorothea Lange was born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. When she was seven years old, she had become lame from polio. Polio lamed her right leg from the knee down. Dorothea said in reference of her childhood illness that "I think it was perhaps the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me" (Sufrin 75). When she was twelve years old, her father deserted the family and she never saw him or heard from him ever again. Her mother took a job in New York's Lower East Side and Dorothea attended public school there. She attended an all-girls' school called Wadleigh High School. During her high school years, she did not have many friends. However, being a loner helped her develop traits that helped her as a photographer. "Absent of friends and a teenager's social life, Lange spent time seeing and appreciating the visual images she saw in the everyday life of diverse and busy neighborhoods of New York City" (Oliver). ...
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...and fortitude in the midst of suffering, and her remarkable ability to capture the human spirit so ennobled her photographs that many of them, though noted in time and place, are timeless" (Newall 7). She left a great impression on the people of the 1930s; Her photographs will continue to capture the hearts of the people in the present and the future, for her photographs will remain a great legacy of the United States' history.
Works Cited
Newall, Beaumont. Commentary. Dorothea Lange Looks At The American Country Women.
Lange, Dorothea. Forth Worth: The Amon Carter Museum, 1978.
Oliver, Susan. Dorothea Lange. 7 December 2003. 30 March 2004.
Stryker, Roy, and Nancy Wood. "In This Proud Land." American Heritage. August 1973: 41.
Sufrin, Mark. Focus on America: Profiles of Nine Photographers. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1987.
Grant Wood was a Regionalist artist who continually endeavored to capture the idyllic beauty of America’s farmlands. In 1930 he had been roaming through his hometown in Iowa searching for inspiration when he stumbled upon a house that left him spellbound. From this encounter came America’s iconic American Gothic. Not long after Wood’s masterpiece was complete the once ideal countryside and the people who tended to it were overcome by despair and suffering as the Great Depression came to be. It was a time of economic distress that affected nearly every nation. America’s stock market crashed in 1929 and by 1933 millions of Americans were found without work and consequently without adequate food, shelter, and other necessities. In 1935, things took a turn for the worst as severe winds and dust storms destroyed the southern Great Plains in the event that became known as the Dust Bowl. Farmers, who had been able to fall back on their crops during past depressions, were hit especially hard. With no work or way or other source of income, many farms were foreclosed, leaving countless families hungry and homeless. Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born man who had a deep passion for social injustice, captures the well-known hopelessness of the Great Depression through his photograph Rural Rehabilitation Client. Shahn and Wood use their art to depict the desperation of everyday farmers in America due to the terrors and adverse repercussions that the Great Depression incited.
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/dorotheadix.html. This site gives another overview of Dorothea Dix’s early life and career highlights, but does so with an emphasis on her finding her religious home among ...
what the reader once thought of Dorothea, a woman of dignity, into a naive child.
Being a silent third party to a father screaming at his seven-year-old daughter for putting the inner tube in the wrong place. People watching has for a long time been one of my favorite activities as a third party you are able to see people for what they are, unbiased by already having known the person. Eugene Richards’s book has made me look at my hobby from an artistic vantage point. He’s made me start to think that one day I would like to be one behind a telephoto lens, capturing those moments that people don’t think anyone else saw. Richards photographs have made me realise that photography is more than a point a shoot process.
I glance amusedly at the photo placed before me. The bright and smiling faces of my family stare back me, their expressions depicting complete happiness. My mind drifted back to the events of the day that the photo was taken. It was Memorial Day and so, in the spirit of tradition my large extended family had gathered at the grave of my great grandparents. The day was hot and I had begged my mother to let me join my friends at the pool. However, my mother had refused. Inconsolable, I spent most of the day moping about sulkily. The time came for a group picture and so my grandmother arranged us all just so and then turned to me saying, "You'd better smile Emma or you'll look back at this and never forgive yourself." Eager to please and knowing she would never let it go if I didn't, I plastered on a dazzling smile. One might say a picture is worth a thousand words. However, who is to say they are the accurate or right words? During the 1930s, photographers were hired by the FSA to photograph the events of the Great Depression. These photographers used their images, posed or accurate, to sway public opinion concerning the era. Their work displayed an attempt to fulfill the need to document what was taking place and the desire to influence what needed to be done.
She was born on April 4, 1802, and she was also the oldest of three children. When she was younger her father was not home very often and her mother was not very involved with them. This forced Dorothea Dix to pretty much be the person to raise her and her siblings. When Dix was twelve, she left home to live with her grandmother in Boston. Dix later moved in with her aunt who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.
Dorothea had spent a long day capturing images and she was going back to print the images when she had drove past a sign that said, “Pea Picker’s Camp.” Dorothea continued to drive thinking she had enough photographs she did not need anymore. Something struck her that she could not resist and eventually she turned around saying, “I was following instinct, not reason” (Partridge, Lange 2). She stopped at the worn down camp and was intrigued by a mother and her seven children. Dorothea took her camera over to them and no one asked any questions. She captured only six images of this mother and her youngest children. The woman had told Dorothea that the freezing rain and sleet had ruined the pea crop. They did not have any work and they had to sell tires for food (Partridge, Lange 3). Dorothea had no idea what those images would do for her career, but she knew she had to show the world what those people in “Pea Picker’s Camp” were going through.
The Great Depression from 1929 to 1933 was perhaps one of the darkest times in the United States. The desperation had spread to every single corner of the nation. Millions of people had lost their jobs and savings, parents were not able to provide food for their children. In the meantime, this greatest despair was to become the best opportunity for many outstanding artists and their works to sparkle.
was born in Vienna, Austria in 1909, where she lived with her parents until the
By the time she reached the age of 21, Lillian felt that she needed secure work because she didn’t have any plans for marriage. To try to fill the need she had felt, Lillian chose nursing. She enrolled into the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses, and after finishing the two-year program at the Nursing School in 1891, she took a position at the New York Juvenile Asylum.
The Life and Works of Annie Leibovitz Annie Leibovitz is one of the best portrait photographers in this modern age. Her works focus on varied subjects but hover more among celebrity portraits. Apart from these, her photographs depict visual stories that affect the audience's emotions. The diversity and life of her photographs create visual artistic realms that touch the soul. Biography:
In December of 2012, she sold her very expensive townhouse for $33million to move closer to her family. And she was presented with the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication, which in an arrangement of twelve-month prizes granted in Spain by the Prince of Asturias Foundation to people, elements or associations from far and wide who make eminent accomplishments in the sciences, humanities, and open undertakings. Now most of her pioneer pictures are kept in many different galleries all over the United States. She is still known as one of America’s best portrait photographers.
Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty(tm)s Photography: Images into Fiction. Critical Essays on Eudora Welty. W. Craig Turner and Lee Emling Harding. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1989. 288-289.
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.