This is a photo taken in November 1935 by Dorothea Lange at a
Resettlement Administration centre in California. The photo depicts three young
boys who have migrated, with their family, from Texas. They appear to be
sitting in a truck where all of their possessions are covered by a blanket.
They also have a barrel of water, which conveys the idea of some of the
difficulties faced by migrating families, for example the rarity of clean
water, this is something that is made even harder in a hot and often drought stricken
state such as a California.
Knowing that the location the family have
migrated from is in Texas, we could assume that they were fleeing the Dust Bowl
and therefore clean water would’ve been seen as an incredible luxury. From the pickup
truck that the family is driving it would be reasonable to assume that the
family used to be farmers and therefore would be the most affected by the
Depression and the Dust Bowl.
The fact that the photo shows three very
young boys could be seen as showing them as "Perfect Victims" (a term
coined by Lawrence Levine). This photo creates a sympathetic feeling from its
audience. It gives the viewer a sense of the vast scale of the people affected
by the Depression. As poverty was not new to the United States of America. It
was seen as necessary to shock people by showing images of innocent children
being affected by the catastrophe.
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