Photographing and exploiting victims of economic depression to promote economic prosperity

"I wish she (Lange) hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."
Florence Thompson

How could it be that someone could take a photograph of someone else, which photograph produces millions of dollars in income, and the subject not receive a single penny? Isn't there some way that Florence's descendants can be compensated? Don't they have rights? Can they sue the photographer?
Craig Manson

Few people have heard of Florence Thompson, even though she is the subject of six of the most famous and iconic photographs of all time.  

The photos have come to define an entire era in history, specifically the effect of the 1930's Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era on ordinary working people in the USA.

Florence Thompson- then Florence Owens- (and two of her children) are the subject  of Dorothea Lang's most famous photographs, taken in a Californian pea pickers camp on a cold winters day in 1936. 

Florence Thompson was a widowed migrant worker and mother of seven when the photos (referred to as Migrant Mother) were taken by Lange during the Great Depression. 

The story of how the photos came to be taken is here.

In 1936, the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) had hired Lange and other photographers to document life during the Great Depression. The agency believed that pictures had the power to incite the middle class and move the Roosevelt government to take action for the better.

The photos were used  to portray the fear and struggles of working class families trapped in terrible poverty whilst engaged in the basic tasks of everyday life under the degraded economic and social circumstances wrought by  the Great Depression.

As Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites note, citing Wendy Kozol, the use of impoverished women with children to represent poverty was an established convention of visual culture at the time.

Hariman and John Lois Lucaites also describe how the image and its iconic status came to be exploited commercially and politically in the USA to promote capitalist economic prosperity. 

However, they argue that the image still acts as a resource for advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed and the economically marginalized in contemporary society.

Lange didn’t ask Florence Owens's name when she took the pictures. In the 1970s she identified herself in a letter to a local newspaper editor signed Florence Thompson.

As Craig Manson points out in this article, Lange received no royalties from the photographs as she was working for a US Government agency for whom she took the photos. 

As Craig Manson points out whilst individuals and enterprises have profited handsomely making tens of millions of dollars out of the photo, neither Florence Thompson (who died in 1988) nor her family  have ever seen a cent. 

Manson goes on to explore whether Florence Owens (Thompson) had any rights with respect to the photographs:

How could it be that someone could take a photograph of someone else, which photograph produces millions of dollars in income, and the subject not receive a single penny? Isn't there some way that Florence's descendants can be compensated? Don't they have rights? Can they sue the photographer? 

A print of the photo sold for $244,500 in 1988, Lange's personal print sold for $141,500 in 2002 and the original print sold for $296,000 in 2005.

The photos have featured on US postage stamps, in Bill Clinton's political campaigns, in advertisements to sell all sorts of commodities, on magazine covers  and in charity fund raising.
The US Library of Congress sells prints for $28 each and for $85 patrons can purchase a framed print containing a quotation from Dorothea Lang herself.

So what is Manson's conclusion?:

Because the photographs were original works of the United States Government, and because federal courts have ruled that the Copyright Act trumps state publicity laws, it is unlikely that her descendants will ever have a claim to any of the millions of dollars made from the picture of their mother and some of her children.

 An 1983 interview with Florence (Owen) Thompson can be found here.

This interview is with Katherine McIntosh, one of Florence Thompson's children who appears in the photo (she was 4 at the time). Katherine McIntosh recounts how the photo bought both shame and determination to the family.

Witnessing injustice: Dorothea Lange and Nellie Wong

Nellie Wong is a Chinese American poet whose parents were Chinese immigrants. Wong is also a political activist for feminist and socialist causes.

During World War II the Wong family worked in a Berkeley grocery store. The internment of their Japanese American neighbors had a profound impact on Nellie and her understanding of racism against Asian Americans. 

Wong's poem attempt to understand why her Japanese neighbors were being sent to internment camps when she and her family were considered patriotic citizens.

The photos on this post  were taken by Dorothea Lange who photographed the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Lange was hired by the American War Relocation Authority to take photographs of Japanese Americans who were being interned in camps (detention centres) throughout America. The photos were impounded by the government and only made public in 2006 in a book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored images of Japanese Internment.

Fong's poem and Lange's photos remind us that to respond to injustice, we must first learn how to see it and speak it.

Can't Tell
By Nellie Wong

When World War II was declared
on the morning radio,
we glued our ears, widened our eyes
Our bodies shivered.

A voice said
Japan was the enemy,
Pearl Harbour a shambles
and in our grocery store
In Berkeley, we were suspended

next to the meat market
where voices hummed,
valises, pots and pans packed,
no more hot dogs, baloney
pork kidneys.

We children huddled on wooden planks
and my parents whispered:
We are Chinese, we are Chinese
safety pins anchored,
our loins ached.

Shortly our Japanese neighbours vanished
any my parents continued to whisper:
We are Chinese, we are Chinese.

we wore black arm bands
put up a sign
in bold letters.

Photographing and exploiting class and the victims of economic depression

"I wish she (Lange) hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."
Florence Thompson

How could it be that someone could take a photograph of someone else, which photograph produces millions of dollars in income, and the subject not receive a single penny? Isn't there some way that Florence's descendants can be compensated? Don't they have rights? Can they sue the photographer?

Craig Manson

Few people have heard of Florence Thompson, even though she is the subject of six of the most famous and iconic photographs of all time.  

The photos have come to define an entire era in history, specifically the effect of the 1930's Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era on ordinary working people in the USA.

Florence Thompson- then Florence Owens- (and two of her children) are the subject  of Dorothea Lang's most famous photographs, taken in a Californian pea pickers camp on a cold winters day in 1936. 

Florence Thompson was a widowed migrant worker and mother of seven when the photos (referred to as Migrant Mother) were taken by Lange during the Great Depression. 

The story of how the photos came to be taken is here.

In 1936, the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) had hired Lange and other photographers to document life during the Great Depression. The agency believed that pictures had the power to incite the middle class and move the Roosevelt government to take action for the better.

The photos were used  to portray the fear and struggles of working class families trapped in terrible poverty whilst engaged in the basic tasks of everyday life under the degraded economic and social circumstances wrought by  the Great Depression.

As Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites note, citing Wendy Kozol, the use of impoverished women with children to represent poverty was an established convention of visual culture at the time.

Hariman and John Lois Lucaites also describe how the image and its iconic status came to be exploited commercially and politically in the USA to promote capitalist economic prosperity. 

However, they argue that the image still acts as a resource for advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed and the economically marginalized in contemporary society.

Lange didn’t ask Florence Owens's name when she took the pictures. In the 1970s she identified herself in a letter to a local newspaper editor signed Florence Thompson.

As Craig Manson points out in this article, Lange received no royalties from the photographs as she was working for a US Government agency for whom she took the photos. 

As Craig Manson points out whilst individuals and enterprises have profited handsomely making tens of millions of dollars out of the photo, neither Florence Thompson (who died in 1988) nor her family  have ever seen a cent. 

Manson goes on to explore whether Florence Owens (Thompson) had any rights with respect to the photographs:

How could it be that someone could take a photograph of someone else, which photograph produces millions of dollars in income, and the subject not receive a single penny? Isn't there some way that Florence's descendants can be compensated? Don't they have rights? Can they sue the photographer? 

A print of the photo sold for $244,500 in 1988, Lange's personal print sold for $141,500 in 2002 and the original print sold for $296,000 in 2005.

The photos have featured on US postage stamps, in Bill Clinton's political campaigns, in advertisements to sell all sorts of commodities, on magazine covers  and in charity fund raising.

The US Library of Congress sells prints for $28 each and for $85 patrons can purchase a framed print containing a quotation from Dorothea Lang herself.

So what is Manson's conclusion?:

Because the photographs were original works of the United States Government, and because federal courts have ruled that the Copyright Act trumps state publicity laws, it is unlikely that her descendants will ever have a claim to any of the millions of dollars made from the picture of their mother and some of her children.

 An 1983 interview with Florence (Owen) Thompson can be found here.

This interview is with Katherine McIntosh, one of Florence Thompson's children who appears in the photo (she was 4 at the time). Katherine McIntosh recounts how the photo bought both shame and determination to the family.

Internment camps and institutionalised racism

(Photos in the public domain)
A number of people have asked about the photos taken by Dorothea Lange on the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II, a sad chapter in American history. Here are some more of Lange's remarkable photos, all censored until 2006. I find them absolutely compelling. If you wish to look there is good collection of Lange's photos on the Flickr photo sharing website here and here. On the same site that are also photos of the internment camps taken by other photographers.

the remarkable vision of Dorothea Lange

This photo of a Japanese- American mother and her son was taken by Dorothea Lange in Sacramento County California during the forced internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbour. It is one of 800 photos Lange took of Japanese Americans. The photos were censored by the US Army until 2006.

The caption to the photo reads:

"A soldier and his mother in a strawberry field. The soldier, age 23, volunteered July 10, 1941. He was furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for their evacuation. He is the youngest of six years children, two of them volunteers in United States Army. The mother, age 53, came from Japan 37 years ago. Her husband died 21 years ago, leaving her to raise six children. She worked in a strawbery basket factory until last year when her her children leased three acres of strawberries “so she wouldn’t have to work for somebody else”. The family is Buddhist. This is her youngest son. Her second son is in the army stationed at Fort Bliss. 453 families are to be evacuated from this area. (Photo: Japan Focus).
The photo can be found in a piece by historian Linda Gordon here.

The release of a new biography of Dorthea Lange by historian Linda Gordon is a reminder of the contemporary significance of her work. From her photos of the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II, to her remarkable photos of people mired in poverty and destitution during the Great Depression, Lange is regarded as one of the greatest photographic witnesses. Her work has profound resonance with contemporary times.

The photos taken during the worst years of the 1930's Depression show the human costs of poverty and unemployment. The Depression era photographs show a time of extreme dislocation, a time when millions of American families were made poorer as a result of corporate and market collapse. Those photos take on a particular resonance today as more and more ordinary people are driven into unemployment and destitution as a result of the corporate induced recession.

Only recently uncovered and just as remarkable are Lange's photos of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Lange was hired by the American War Relocation Authority to take photographs of Japanese Americans who were being interned in camps (detention centres) throughout America. The photos were impounded by the government and only made public in 2006 in a book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored images of Japanese Internment.

From Lange's work there is much that we can take that is directly relevant today. Whenever I see her photos I am reminded that to respond to injustice, we must first simply learn how to see it. Here's Linda Gordon, the author of the new biography, on the relevance of Lange's photos in the context of contemporary debates about internment without charge:

"Their relevance to internment-without-charges today seemed to me to require bringing them to public attention. Dorothea Lange challenged the political culture that categorized people of Japanese ancestry as disloyal, perfidious, potentially traitorous, that stripped them of their citizenship and made them unAmerican."

iconic photographs- dorothea lange

The pagent is vast, and I clutch at tiny details, inadequate
Dorothea Lange

I am currently reading Anne Whiston Spirn's book about Dorothea Lange. (Anne Whiston Spirn 2008 Daring to Look: Dorothea Lang's Photographs and Reports from the Field). The photo shown is part of a series of photographs titled Migrant Mother and was taken by Lange in 1936 in California. I find it one of the more haunting and evocative photographs I have seen.
Here is some background about the photo taken from the website of the US Library of Congress

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Lange is regarded as one of the greatest photographic witnesses and her photos taken during the worst years of the 1930's Depression show the human costs of poverty and unemployment that resulted.

Lange's photographs show a time of extreme dislocation, a time when millions of American families were made poorer as a result of corporate and market collapse. Sound familiar!!! Her photos take on a particular resonance today as more and more tent cities arise in the US to provide for the "economic homeless" caused by the corporate induced recession.Iconic photographs worth checking out.(see the book Dorothea Lange Photographs of a Lifetime) and this website http://www.theblogofrecord.com/tag/iconic-great-depression-images/