Continuing yesterday’s topic of parallels between the Great Depression and the current Recession, the fragility of families and children in the 99%, both then and now, is troubling. Lange’s photos personalized the migrants who took to the roads looking for labor in the fields of the west after their jobs were either lost to the mechanization of farming or the environmental degradation when whole geographic areas were pushed into ruin with the economic collapse of the late 20s due to unsustainable banking and investment practices.
Destitute Family During Great Depression Looking for Work & Traveling by Rail
Young Migrant Worker Family Hitch-hiking During Great Depression
Migrant Worker, age 13, California, Great Depression
13 year old, Sharecropper's Daughter, Southern U.S., Great Depression
Lange personalized the purportedly “shiftless” migrants changing the perception of the population about the people who had lost everything. Do the Occupy folks need a similar champion to document and distribute real information behind the families who have representatives occupying the various cities across the U.S. and the world.
Another of Lange’s photos suggests that the fat cats in New York stayed pretty fat during the lean years of the Depression.
New York, late 1930s, by Dorothea Lange
Does this site serve the same purpose today as documentary photography did back then?