For maximum human beings I'd say, the photo that sums up the Great Depression in the US is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother. As iconic because the image of 32-yr-old Florence Owens Thompson is, that it is a black and white photograph takes it out of my potential to relate to her as a actual individual. She's an archetype, she is The Depression and the struggle of a migrant employee's life is etched deeply into her harassed face. Even so, I actually have a difficult time relating to her as a man or women. I assume I am a fabricated from my generation, however black and white images, regardless of its creative enchantment, makes its subjects seem unreal.
I'm admitting this as an ardent student of history. Studying the past is the best way to understand where you are now so far as I'm concerned and it's incredibly important to remember that history doesn't march in a straight line. It's a tapestry of interconnected threads and each thread depends on every other thread to make up the whole. It's too easy to cast the subjects of portraits and black and white photos in either/ or terms. Historical figures, like all human beings, were complicated and conflicted and they got through their lives the best way they could. The same as anybody. Life was not simpler, less violent, more directed, safer, cleaner or more wise in the past. The people who lived before us decried the state of things, clung to what ever they could, they loved, felt loss, smiled and laughed. They were us and I force myself to remember that any time I read something historical.
I've been obsessing for the ultimate couple of years approximately US history within the years that lead up to World War II. Then, as now, the economic system turned into spinning out of manage and no one regarded to understand what was taking place. I grew up taking note of my mother and father' and grandmothers' testimonies approximately life throughout the Great Depression and it usually thrilled me to listen about a time while butter become an expensive treat and everyone had a single pair of shoes. But dad and mom and grandparents tend to tell the kids int inheritor lives the myths of their lives. It's a parental issue to do, to apply one's existence studies for teaching a younger technology. It's been a actual boon to flesh out the ones testimonies of expensive butter.
The world we stay in nowadays turned into built by using the folks who survived the Depression and World War II, for better and for worse. Through a mixture of difficult paintings, self-reliance and an entire lot of government assist, they left us a world in which such things as kitchen design depend.
Yesterday a great friend of this blog, Madame Sunday , popped a link from the Denver Post up onto Twitter. And the link contained 75 color photographs of life around the US between the years of 1939-43. I hate to admit it, but the subjects are easier to see as human beings because they're photographed in color. I spent hours yesterday pouring over these images and here are ten that really stood out to me.
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| Barker on the grounds at the nation honest. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941. Reproduction from coloration slide. Photo by way of Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his own family. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from shade slide. Photo by means of Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Distributing surplus commodities. St. Johns, Arizona, October 1940. Reproduction from coloration slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Young African American boy. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1942 or 1943. Photo with the aid of John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Bayou Bourbeau plantation, a Farm Security Administration cooperative. Vicinity of Natchitoches, Louisiana, August 1940. Reproduction from colour slide. Photo with the aid of Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| African American migratory workers by a "juke joint." Belle Glade, Florida, February 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Women employees hired as wipers within the roundhouse having lunch of their rest room, Chicago and Northwest Railway Company. Clinton, Iowa, April 1943. Reproduction from color slide. Photo through Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Rural college kids. San Augustine County, Texas, April 1943. Reproduction from color slide. Photo through John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| Mike Evans, a welder, at the rip tracks at Proviso yard of the Chicago and Northwest Railway Company. Chicago, Illinois, April 1943. Reproduction from shade slide. Photo by means of Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
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| School youngsters making a song. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo through Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress |
The rest of these photos are on the Denver Post's website . Spend some time with them. As the economy flounders and as the US heads into another election season, it's important to remember what we have in common instead of concentrating so stridently on the things that set us apart.