Mistrust your eyes. A plea for a careful reading of photography
Source: Library of Congress: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/
Dorothea Lange and “Migrant Mother”, 1936.
Do you happen to know this photo from Dorothea Lange? It takes us straight to the 1930s rural America. An America which was hit badly by an economic recession. An America which was used to see foreign migrants seeking for jobs. But this kind of economic crisis after the Great Depression was different. To the migrants came thousands of “American” people who had to give up their farms due to drought and new laws and moved to California in desperate hope for work. At the same time the government with Roosevelt as its president invented programs to make people find jobs and to help them to build up a new life. This agenda, one part of the so called “New Deal”-Politic, was highly controversial. So, the government decided to send out photographers under the name of “Farm Security Administration” (FSA) in that region to document how the situation REALLY is like. The aim of the FSA was to show “the city people what it’s like to live on the farm.”
So, what do we actually see?
Not much of a farm, though. We see a women looking worried in the distance, frowning, her chin propped up. Her upper arms are covered with tattered clothes. The skin of her arms show dirty marks. What fascinates me about this photo is that her dignity is not at all disturbed by its surrounding poverty. Two of her kids hide their faces behind her shoulder; a little baby sleeps almost unseen on her arm. The light let the mother’s face become centric point of the composition. In the foreground a small object extends into the photo. We don’t see much of the background or in which place exactly the photo has been taken. It’s just us and the family. But why is the mother alone with her three children, where is the father? One might ask.
The caption, added by the FSA, tells us: “Destitute pea pickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936”. That’s interesting because it perverts the facts and it omits some. Dorothea Lange originally invented a different subtitle saying: “Migrant agricultural worker’s family. Seven hungry children. Mother, age 32. Father is native of California. Destitute in pea pickers Camp, Nipomo, California, because of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Of the 2,500 people in this camp, most of them are destitute.”
It’s an interesting detail that the government needed pictures showing destitute pea pickers, so it was just too easy to let “agricultural workers” become “pea pickers” to fulfil their purposes. After sending the photos to the “San Francisco News” in March 1936 it’s thus no surprise to find them reporting that the government was just informed about this miserable circumstances by a “coincidental” visit of a photographer but – thanks to the New-Deal-politic, the reader might think – help is already on its way to the camp. The headline would ask: “What does the ‘New Deal’ mean to this mother and her children?”
There was also a long discussion about the “detail” which is extending in the photo. It’s the post of the tent and Lange apparently wanted it to be removed from the photo. The FSA insisted on leaving it where it was since that would prove the documentary, authentic style of the picture. So this little detail was very useful to the FSA in proving the photo’s authenticity.
Do you see what I mean? What the photo is actually telling us totally depends on the circumstances under which we are looking at it. We still see a strong, dignified mother bearing a lot of responsibility but at the same time a confidence that leaves no doubt to us that she will find a way out of that misery. But as Dorothea Lange was receiving a salary by the FSA, her photos have to be read in that regard as well. Although Lange was saying “We were after the truth,” her photos have a political intention. They pretend to depict what was happening in 1930s rural America. But what they are showing us is a rural America in the way the Farm Security Administration wants it to be perceived. To say it with Pierre Bourdieu: This photography shows us a tautology. That is, it depicts an apparent reality that corresponds exactly to the reality which was formulated BEFORE to BE the reality. In other words the photography provides the evidence of what was told to be the truth through radio and newspapers. The shocking effect “Migrant Mother” had above all, was that it totally mocked the American dream of security and independence and opportunity in which every child has been taught to believe. In that way the photo aimed to stimulate feelings and to engage the observer emotionally. People couldn’t look away anymore. They have seen their faces.
What do you think? Is there such a thing as “neutral” photography?
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was an American photographer working for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and in that role documenting the life and work of migratory farm workers. Her works are categorized under “social documentary photography”. A fact Lange didn’t like much. Migrant Mother is Lange’s most famous photo. It spread through the newspapers and became the metaphor of a nation in crisis.
Image source: Library of Congress: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/