50+ Pics That Capture American Families From 1930s-1950s by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was a documentary photographer whose work greatly endorsed and influenced during the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, she began to document unemployed men who wandered the street of San Francisco. These photographs also led to a commission in 1935 from the federal Resettlement Administration, later called the FSA (Farm Security Administration). With her unique style of photography and dynamic compositions, she produced starling photographs of her subjects, which directs viewers’ attention towards the subject. In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for achievement in photography. She also documented the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast on assignment for the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Lange also taught fine art photography at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). In 1952, she co-founded the photography magazine Aperture. Dorothea Lange died of esophageal cancer at the age of seventy. Three months later, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a retrospective of her work, which Lange herself had helped to curate. In honor of the great photographer, Bygonely has compiled a list of some of the tremendous photographs taken by Dorothea Lange.

#1 Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936

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#2 Workers extracting turpentine in a Georgia forest, 1930s

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#3 Mexican migrant worker, Imperial Valley, California, 1937

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#4 Oklahoma migrant stalled in the California desert in 1937

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#5 A store owner’s response to anti-Japanese sentiment in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, Oakland, California, 1942

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#6 The Mochida family before their relocation to an internment camp for Japanese Americans

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#7 Policeman at a street meeting in San Francisco, 1936

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#8 Enforcement of Executive Order 9066. Japanese children made to wear identification tags, Hayward, California, 1942

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#9 US Highway 40, California, 1956

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#10 White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933

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#11 “Trees,” Berkeley, California, 1957.

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#12 Woman and Child, Nile Village, Egypt, 1963

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#13 A Dust Bowl farm. Coldwater District, north of Dalhart, Texas

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#14 Drought-stricken farmer and family near Muskogee, Oklahoma

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#15 Family walking on highway, five children, 1936

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#16 Wagoner County, Oklahoma

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#17 The highway going West. U.S. 80 near Lordsburg, New Mexico

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#18 Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio, 1936

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#19 Four families, three of them related with fifteen children, from the Dust Bowl in Texas in an overnight roadside camp near Calipatria, California.

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#20 Billboard along U.S. 99 behind which three destitute families of migrants are camped. Kern County, California

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#21 Drought refugees from Texas encamped in California near Exeter

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#22 Brawley, Imperial Valley, In Farm Security Administration (FSA) migratory labor camp

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#23 In a carrot pullers’ camp near Holtville, California

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#24 1936 drought refugee from Polk, Missouri

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#25 Old time professional migratory laborer camping on the outskirts of Perryton

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#26 Ex-tenant farmer from Texas, came to work in the fruit and vegetable harvests. Coachella Valley, California

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#27 Near Meloland, Imperial Valley, Large scale agriculture

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#28 Carrot pullers from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Mexico

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#29 Cabbage cutting and hauling by new Vessey (flat truck) system, now also used in carrots and lettuce. Imperial Valley, California

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#30 Pea pickers from Vermont – 6 weeks earnings $7.00 – at squatter’s camp, Nipomo

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#31 Ex-tenant farmer on relief grant in the Imperial Valley, California

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#32 Children of Oklahoma drought refugee in migratory camp in California

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#33 A mother in California who with her husband and her two children will be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration.

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#34 Migrant workers’ camp, outskirts of Marysville, California

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#35 Son of destitute migrant, American River camp, near Sacramento, California

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#36 Sick migrant child. Washington, Yakima Valley, Toppenish

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#37 Migratory boy in squatter camp. Has come to Yakima Valley for the third year to pick hops

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#38 Washington, Yakima Valley, near Wapato

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#39 Young Worker mighrated throughout the country to search for a job

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#40 Calipatria, Imperial Valley. Idle pea pickers discuss prospects for work, California

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#41 Family who traveled by freight train. Washington, Toppenish, Yakima Valley

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#42 Entering Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp for migratory laborers at Indio. Coachella Valley, California

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#43 Heads of families on the Mineral King cooperative farm.

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#44 Family living in tent while building the house around them. Near Klamath Falls, Klamath county, Oregon

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#45 Ball game at Shafter migrant camp, California

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#46 Water supply, American River camp, California

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#47 Migrant worker on California highway

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#48 Billboard on U.S. Highway 99 in California

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#49 Waiting for the semimonthly relief checks at Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California

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#50 Water supply: an open settling basin from the irrigation ditch in a California squatter camp near Calipatria

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#51 Eight boys at Lincoln Bench School Near Ontario, Malheur County, Oregon

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#52 Migrant children. Merrill, Klamath County, Oregon. In unit of FSA

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#53 Squatter camp on the flat where families live during the orange picking season near Porterville, 1936

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#54 Millworker’s house six miles north of Roxboro, 1939

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#55 Girls with food for Fourth of July celebration at Delta Cooperative Farm, 1936

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#56 Ernest W. Kirk Jr. with his two sons on their farm near Ordway, Colorado, 1939

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#57 Children and home of cotton workers at migratory camp in southern San Joaquin Valley, California, 1936

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#58 Family from near Dallas, Texas, 1939

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#59 Mommy’s Little Soldier, 1939

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#60 White sharecropper family, formerly workers in the Gastonia textile mills, 1937

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