How photography defined the Great Depression

How photography defined the Great Depression

Photographers played a great role in chronicling the 1930 Great Depression. It was a time to show the world what the farm labourers and migrants were going through from the camera lens and great photographers came to the rescue.

What is the Great Depression?

The Great Depression was an era of severe economic depression in the 1930s. It all started from the United States of America and soon spread across the world. It started in 1929 and ended in late 1930.

Roles photographers played

The roles photographers played during the Great Depression are still very much memorable. The photographers didn’t just go out of their ways to do this. The involvement of the photographers was initiated by the government. President Franklin Roosevelt made a great effort to relieve the serious economic situation during that period. He rolled out an economic program called the New Deal. In order to make the program effective, the government employed top photographers to properly document the hardship the people were facing by documenting their sufferings through the camera lens. The efforts of these photographers produced some iconic photos of the Great Depression in the history of America. There was a Resettlement Administration created to build relief camps and also give loans and provide relocation assistance to farmers who were greatly affected by the Depression. This was all part of the New Deal. The Resettlement Administration was later replaced with the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

A former advisor to Roosevelt, Rex Tugwell, was charged with the responsibility of heading the department. Rex hired a Columbia University professor Roy Stryker as the Chief of the Historical Section. Stryker was responsible for the agency’s photographic documentation.

Stryker’s job was to document the photographs of government assistance to the affected people. He is to ensure that the rural farmers and migrants looking for work were photographed.

Stryker went in search of great documentary photographers. The emotion of the suffering people was well captured so as to bring empathy to their plight.

Stryker went on to engage Arthur Rothstein. Rothstein made a great contribution by capturing Fleeing a Dust Storm. This was a photo of an Oklahoma homesteader and his two sons walking through the dust.

Dorothea Lange was also part of the team of photographers. Lange, a New Jersey-born photographer captured vividly the poverty-ridden families in different camps. She was well known for the photos of a 32-year-old mother, Florence Leona Christie, living in a camp of dejected pea pickers. One of her photographs was titled: The Migrant Mother. This eventually became the hallmark of the Great Depression. The photo elicited a lot of actions. There was an immediate emergency food delivery to the pea pickers’ camp.

The Great Depression is an event that would never be forgotten in the history of America. The poverty was really avoidable but it became a catastrophic situation. It was really terrifying. The world came to its knees. The efforts of these American photographers were applauded by many.