Discussion Board 6

Why the project has significant impact on the society? What was the role of Migrant Mother Photography in the period or great depression and what is it nowadays?

FSA-OWI stands for Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information. It was an organization to employ the photographer to take pictures of the rural and small-town life. In which FSA-OWI collections exhibited an extensive pictorial record of American Life between 1935 and 1944. There are more than 160 thousands of black and white photographs and 1.6 thousand of colored photography that were taken. This collection shows the rural and small-town life during the great depression. As we know, the great depression make the people suffer the hard time, especially, the farmers and the new west migrants. Those people who has little incomes and be starving most of time.

Farmer and Sons, Dust Storm by Arthur Rothstein 1936

The photograph of Migrant Mother is the famous example of the FSA-OWI collections. It was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936. Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer; she also worked for the Farm Security Administration. The name of Migrant Mother is Florence Owens Thompson; she was a 32 years old widow at that time and had 7 children to be fed. They lived in a pea picker’s tent. Due to the failure of early pea crop, Florence and her children had to starve. In the photograph, we would see how helpless and worried she was. Migrant Mother represented the thousands and thousands destitute who suffer the hard time of great depression.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange 1936 

Those photographs have significant impact on the society of the time of great depression as well as the current and future society. The great depression was caused by the stock market crashed in 1929. Those photographers who worked for FSA saved and catch the significant memory of live of great depression. The collection was the proof about how great depression effect the U.S. peoples live, especially the destitute people. It also has impact to the people in nowadays. Even though we did not suffer great depression, we had experience about the several economic turndowns. It reminds us that another great depression may happen in the future.