The Photographer As Agricultural Sociologist

Dorothea Lange: The Photographer as Agricultural Sociologist
Author(s): Linda Gordon

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Dec., 2006), pp. 698-727
Published by: Organization of American Historians
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Dorothea
L an g e:
T he
Photog rapher
as
Ag ricultural Sociolog is t
L in da Gordon
For
s ug g es tion s
on how to us e this article in the U.S.
his tory
clas s room,
s ee our "T each-
in g
the
JAH"
Web
project
at
http: //www.in dian a.edu/-jah/teachin g /.
T o a
s tartlin g deg ree, popular un ders tan din g
of the Great
Depres s ion
of the 1930s de-
rives from vis ual
imag es ,
an d
amon g
them,
Dorothea
L an g e's
are the mos t in fluen tial.
Althoug h man y
do n ot kn ow her
n ame,
her
photog raphs
live in the s ubcon s cious of
virtually an yon e
in the Un ited States who has
an y con cept
of that econ omic dis as ter. Her
pictures
exerted
g reat
force in their own
time,
helpin g s hape
1930s an d 1940s
Popular
Fron t
repres en tation al
an d artis tic
s en s ibility,
becaus e the Farm
Security
Admin is tration
(FSA),
her
employer,
dis tributed the
photog raphs ag g res s ively throug h
the mas s media. If
you
watch the film
T he
Grapes of
Wrath with a collection of her
photog raphs
n ext to
you,
you
will s ee the in fluen ce.'
L an g e's
commitmen t to
makin g
her
photog raphy s peak
to
matters of
in jus tice
was
hardly un ique-thous an ds
of
artis ts , writers , dan cers ,
an d actors
were
tryin g
to con n ect with the vibran t
g ras s -roots
s ocial movemen ts of the time.
T hey
formed a cultural
win g
of the
Popular
Fron t,
a
politics
of liberal-L eft
un ity
in
s upport
of
the New Deal.
T he FSA
photog raphy project
aimed to examin e
s ys tematically
the s ocial an d econ omic
relation s of American
ag ricultural
labor. Yet n on e of the
s cholars hip
about that
un ique
vis ual
project
has made farm workers cen tral to its
an alys is .
On e
con s equen ce
of the
omis -
s ion has been
un deres timatin g
the
policy s pecificity
of the
FSAs
an d
L an g e's expos e.
We
un ders tan d her
work,
an d that of the whole FSA
photog raphy project, differen tly
if we s ee
it as a con tes ted
part
of New Deal farm
policy. Puttin g L an g e's photog raphy
back in to
that con text makes the
s harpn es s
of its critical
edg e
more
apparen t.
FSA
photog raphy
was
a
political campaig n .
T he
FSA was at the left
edg e
of the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture,
an d
its
was at the left
edg e
of the
FSA.
T he
photog raphers
n ot
on ly
chal-
len g ed
an en tire
ag ricultural political econ omy,
but tried als o to illus trate the racial
s ys -
tem in which it
operated-a s ys tem
it als o rein forced. Some
politician s
an d s cholars had
cen s ured s outhern
racis m,
but n o
promin en t
racial liberals addres s ed the more
complex
L in da Gordon is
profes s or
of
his tory
at New York
Un ivers ity.
She would like to than k
Georg e Chaun cey, Jes s
Gil-
bert,
Bets y Mayer,
Ron dal
Partridg e, Sally
Stein ,
an d the
dis cern in g
readers for the
Journ al ofAmerican His tory
for
their
help.
Readers
may
con tact Gordon at
lin da.g ordon @n yu.edu.
'
Her mos t famous
picture,
often kn own as
"Mig ran t
Mother," had,
by
the late
1960s ,
been us ed in
approxi-
mately
ten thous an d
publis hed
items ,
res ultin g
in million s of
copies ,
in the es timation of
Popular Photog raphy
mag azin e.
Howard M. L evin an d Katherin e
Northrup,
Dorothea
L an g e:
Farm
Security
Admin is tration
Photog raphs ,
1935-1939 (2 vols ., Glen coe, 1980), I,
42. T he
Grapes ofWrath,
dir.
John
Ford
(T wen tieth
Cen tury-Fox,
1940).
698 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
T he
Photog rapher
as
699
but
equally un jus t
race relation s in the Wes t. Sin ce mos t
people
of color in the wes tern
Un ited States at that time lived in rural
areas ,
the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture's photog ra-
phy project provided
a
un ique opportun ity
to make them vis ible to urban ites an d n on -
wes tern ers . Even the
g en der
relation s revealed
amon g
thes e
photog raphic s ubjects
were
les s con ven tion al than main s tream dis cours e would
s ug g es t.
Amon g documen tary photog raphers ,
Dorothea
L an g e
was
exemplary
in both mean -
in g s
of the word: her work
exemplified
a
prevailin g s tyle
an d,
as a
premier practition er
of that
s tyle,
in fluen ced it. Her
prog res s ive
commitmen t was at on ce
typical
for cultural
fron t documen taris ts an d als o
un us ually targ eted,
becaus e s he was
promotin g s pecific
New Deal
policies .2
She
even tually
received
g reat
acclaim
(mos t
of
it,
un fortun ately, pos t-
humous )
as a mas ter art
photog rapher;
but the
ag ricultural
reform to which s he was s o
pas s ion ately
committed did n ot
(an d
perhaps
could
n ot)
materialize. Her
photog raphy
thus als o
expos es
the limitation s of even a
n otably prog res s ive part
of the New Deal's
ag -
ricultural
policy.
T hat
L an g e,
a
city-born
(Hoboken )
city
dweller
(San Fran cis co),
became an ace doc-
umen tary photog rapher throug h
her work on rural America did n ot make her
un ique
amon g
FSA
photog raphers . T hey
were
main ly
of n orthern urban
backg roun d,
a remark-
able
proportion
of them
Jewis h (five
of the eleven
major photog raphers ).3
But their ori-
g in s may
have been a
s tren g th
as well as a weakn es s . Becaus e
they
s aw rural
s ociety
with
eyes
un habituated to
ag ricultural
vis tas ,
they
took
n othin g
for
g ran ted,
an d becaus e
they
n eeded to
learn ,
they
were better able to teach others .
L an g e
executed the FSA'S
as s ig n men t
more
thoroug hly
than
an y
other in dividual
photog rapher-becaus e
s he traveled to more
reg ion s
than did the
others ,
becaus e s he was married to an d often traveled with Paul
T ay-
lor,
an
ag riculture expert
an d FSA
in s ider,
an d above all becaus e s he was bas ed in Califor-
n ia,
which
repres en ted
in
man y ways
the future of American
ag riculture.
T o
s implify
a
complex map,
four
s ys tems
of
ag ricultural
labor relation s
prevailed
in the
Un ited States :
family farmin g
in the North an d
Midwes t,
s harecroppin g
in the
South,
ten an t
farmin g
on the s outhern
plain s ,
an d
mig ran t wag e
labor in the Wes t. In all re-
g ion s ag riculture
was
movin g
toward in dus trial-s cale
production
with abs en tee own er-
s hip,
but in each
reg ion
the tran s formation
beg an
from a differen t
s tartin g poin t
an d
proceeded
at a differen t
velocity. Family farmin g ,
the American
ideal,
n ever domin ated
in the
Southeas t,
the s emiarid s outhern
plain s ,
or Californ ia. In the
Southeas t,
s lavery
had built a
plan tation econ omy,
which then
adapted
to a
techn ically
"free" labor force
by
compellin g
ex-s laves an d
man y poor
whites to become
s harecroppers .
In the
dry
s outhern
2
Michael Den n in g us ed the term "cultural fron t" to
iden tify
the arts
production
characteris tic of the
Popular
Fron t
political
allian ce of the late 1930s an d
early
1940s . Michael
Den n in g ,
T he Cultural
Fron t:
T he L aborin g of
American Culture in the T wen tieth
Cen tury
(L on don , 1997).
Popular
Fron t,
in
turn ,
n amed a
particular s trateg y
dic-
tated in 1935
by
the Comin tern to Commun is t
parties throug hout
the
world,
directin g
them to s eek allian ce with
other
parties
of the L eft. But in the Un ited States a
popular
movemen t toward liberal-L eft
un ity
in
s upport
of the
New Deal
preceded
the Commun is t
party s trateg y by
s everal
years .
T his
Popular
Fron t was a movemen t, n ot
an
org an ization ,
an d as a res ult it was
complex, heterog en eous ,
an d often
in tern ally
con flicted, but that did n ot make
it les s in fluen tial.
3
Arthur Roths tein ,
Carl
Mydan s ,
Ben Shahn , Jack
Delan o, an d Edwin Ros s kam are the five
major Jewis h pho-
tog raphers .
Als o
Jewis h
were Es ther
Bubley,
L ouis e
Ros s kam,
Charles Fen n o
Jacobs ,
Arthur
Sieg el,
an d Howard
L iberman . All the
major photog raphers
were formed as adults
throug h
urban
experien ce:
Dorothea
L an g e
in New
York an d San Fran cis co; John
Collier
Jr.
an d Rus s ell L ee in San Fran cis co;
Walker Evan s ,
Arthur Roths tein , Ben
Shahn ,
an d Marion Pos t Wolcott in New York an d Paris ; Carl
Mydan s
in Bos ton an d New
York;
an d
Jack
Delan o in
Philadelphia.
Un like the
photog raphers , man y key
Farm
Security
Admin is tration
(FSA)
admin is trators were s outh-
ern : Will Alexan der an d C. B. Baldwin ,
for
example.
700 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
plain s ,
lan d
s peculation
had es calated lan d
prices , forcin g man y
s mallholders in to debt
an d then
foreclos ure;
s mall farms
remain ed,
but
in creas in g ly
lan d was own ed
by big
len d-
ers an d worked
by
ten an ts . In Californ ia Mexican ran chers were the
orig in al ag ricultur-
is ts . But in the
early
twen tieth
cen tury,
federal fun ds
imported
water for
irrig ation
an d
drain ed
mars hlan ds ,
thereby s ubs idizin g
an
ag ricultural econ omy
domin ated
by big -bus i-
n es s
g rowers depen den t
on
mig ran t
farm
workers -main ly people
of color an d often of
foreig n birth.4 L an g e
was the
on ly
FSA
photog rapher
to cover all three
n on -family
farm
reg ion s ,
an d as a res ult s he documen ted both the mos t "backward" an d the mos t "ad-
van ced"
ag ricultural
labor relation s .
It was a
con jun cture
of American
political
s tructure an d
key
in dividuals that made
rural America the focus of the
big g es t-ever g overn men t photog raphy project.
As a
res ult,
America's
imag es
of the
depres s ion
are more rural than
they
otherwis e would have been .
But the rural focus was con s is ten t with New Deal
politics .
Some of the mos t
prog res s ive
New Dealers were located in the FSA.
T he
ag ricultural s ociolog is t
Jes s
Gilbert has s hown
that
they
divided
roug hly
in to two
g roups : ag rarian
in tellectuals who main tain ed their
faith in the
family-farm
ideal an d urban liberals who favored a more
plan n ed ag ricultural
econ omy. By
the
early
1930s the
protracted ag ricultural depres s ion
had moved the
prob-
lem of farm
ten an cy
to the
top
of both
g roups ' ag en das . Callin g
on a rhetoric derived
from
Jeffers on ian is m, Populis m,
an d
utopian
commun itarian is m,
which co-exis ted un -
eas ily
with a s tatis t commitmen t to econ omic
plan n in g , they as pired
to
n othin g
les s than
s erious lan d
reform-that,
if
fulfilled,
would have amoun ted to the New Deal's mos t fun -
damen tal redis tribution of
power
an d
wealth.5
But in the
FSA,
the
family-farm
ideal
domin ated,
operation alized throug h prog rams
of
res ettlemen t an d loan s to farm families . T he FSA
s oug ht political s upport
for this redis tri-
bution is t
ag en da throug h
a
populis t
n ation alis m characteris tic of
Popular
Fron t s en s ibil-
ity.
I us e the term
"populis t
n ation alis m" in a
g en eric
s en s e,
of
oppos in g political
domin a-
tion
by big
bus in es s or other elites . Its s en s e of "the
people" privileg ed
town an d
coun try
as
oppos ed
to
city
folk,
an d its n ation alis m iden tified thos e folk as the
quin tes s en tial
citi-
zen s . American n ation alis m in this
period
often man ifes ted its elf
throug h
rural an d s mall-
town
imag ery,
however
outdated,
an d this
imag ery
s kewed American s '
un ders tan din g
of
their
actually exis tin g polity
an d
s ociety
as well as their future.6
T he
FSA's photog raphy
project
was
s uppos ed
to
promote
n ot
on ly Departmen t
of
Ag riculture prog rams
but als o
4 Sharecroppin g
is ,
of
cours e,
a form of
ten an cy,
an d there were
hun dreds ,
if n ot thous an ds , of differen t
ten an cy
arran g emen ts ,
but in
g en eral
there was more
s harecroppin g
in the Southeas t an d more s hare or ren t
ten an cy
in the
plain s . T en an cy
con tracts
ran g ed
in their
requiremen ts ,
an d
plain s
ten an ts on
averag e
had more
rig hts
an d econ omic
chan ces than s outhern
ten an ts ,
an d s outhern whites more than s outhern blacks . See
Jon athan
M.
Wien er, "Clas s
Structure an d Econ omic
Developmen t
in the American
South, 1865-1955," American His torical Review, 84
(Oct.
1979), 970-92;
Pete
Dan iel,
Breakin g
the
L an d:
T he
T ran s formation of
Cotton , T obacco, an d Rice Cultures s in ce 1880
(Urban a, 1985); Jack T emple Kirby,
Rural Worlds L os t: T he American South, 1920-1960 (Baton
Roug e,
1987).
5
My in terpretation
of the
FSA is
in debted both to
Jes s
Gilbert's
s cholars hip
an d to con vers ation s with him.
Jes s
Gilbert, "Eas tern Urban L iberals an d Midwes tern
Ag rarian
In tellectuals : T wo
Group
Portraits of
Prog res s ives
in
the New Deal
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture," Ag ricultural His tory,
74
(Sprin g
2000), 162-80; Jes s
Gilbert an d Alice
O'Con n or,
"L eavin g
the L an d Behin d:
Strug g les
for L an d Reform in U.S. Federal
Policy,
1933-1965,"
in Who
Own s America? Social
Con flict
over
Property Rig hts ,
ed.
Harvey
M.
Jacobs (Madis on , 1998), 114-30; Jes s
Gilbert an d
Steve
Brown ,
"Altern ative L an d Reform
Propos als
in the 1930s : T he Nas hville
Ag rarian s
an d the Southern T en an t
Farmers '
Un ion ,"
Ag ricultural His tory,
55
(Oct. 1981), 351-69.
My in terpretation
is als o in debted to
Sidn ey
Bald-
win ,
Poverty
an d Politics :
T he
Ris e an d Declin e
of
the Farm
Security
Admin is tration
(Chapel
Hill, 1968).
6
See Barbara
Melos h,
En g en derin g
Culture: Man hood an d Woman hood in New Deal Public Art an d
T heater
(Was hin g ton ,
1991).
Althoug h
s he does n ot con s ider
photog raphy,
Melos h
s ubjects
other
imag es
of farm families
in New Deal-era murals to a
g en der an alys is
that
fits
FSA
photog raphy.
T he
Photog rapher
as
701
Fig ure
1. "Des titute
pea pickers
in Californ ia. Mother of s even children .
Ag e thirty-two.
Nipomo,
Californ ia." Feb. 1936. Photo
by
Dorothea
L an g e. Courtes y L ibrary of Con g res s ,
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collection ,
L C-USF34-T 01-009058-C
DL C.
a New Deal vis ion for rural
America,
a difficult
as s ig n men t
becaus e of the in coheren ce of
that vis ion . T he
project
reaffirmed
family-farm ideolog y throug h
its
frequen tly
roman tic,
pictures que approach
to a
"s imple"
an d
commun ity-s pirited
rural life an d its con demn a-
tion of
plan tation
an d in dus trial
ag riculture. L an g e's
hus ban d,
Paul
T aylor-who g ot
her
the FSA
job-was
on e of the
ag rarian
in tellectuals an d a believer in
family farmin g des pite
his in timate
kn owledg e
of Californ ia's in dus trial
ag riculture
an d the
overwhelmin g politi-
cal
power
of its
captain s .
Examin in g L an g e's
work with an
ag ricultural emphas is
als o
challen g es
s ome of the
ap-
prais als
of her
photog raphy.
T he
extraordin ary popularity
of s ome of her
photog raphs
has
decon textualized an d un ivers alized
them,
categ orized
them as
art,
an d
thereby
diverted
atten tion from their almos t s ocial-s cien tific
s ig n ifican ce. Partly
becaus e of the icon iza-
tion of her
"Mig ran t
Mother"
photog raph,
s he became iden tified above all with the
s tory
of white
Okies ,
driven from the dus t bowl in to
Californ ia,
their
imag e
fixed
textually by
John
Stein beck's
bes t-s ellin g Grapes of Wrath.7
(See
fig ure
1. All
imag es
are
accompan ied
by L an g e's orig in al caption , except fig ure
8.)
In
fact,
s he worked leas t in the
droug ht
area
an d more in Californ ia an d the Southeas t.
7 Oddly en oug h, "Mig ran t
Mother" has come to s tan d in for urban as well as rural
depres s ion
victims . Michele
L .
L an dis , "Fate,
Res pon s ibility,
an d 'Natural' Dis as ter
Relief:
Narratin g
the American Welfare
State,"
L aw an d So-
ciety
Review, 33 (n o. 2, 1999),
308.
John Stein beck,
T he
Grapes of
Wrath
(New York, 1939).
702 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
L an g e's project
has als o been veiled
by g en dered
clich6s . Critics have often read the
s tron g
emotion al con ten t of her work as
in s tin ctive,
in a
way
s aid to be characteris tic of
female
s en s ibility.
A "n atural" femin in e in tuitiven es s
un derlay
her
photog raphy
in thes e
accoun ts . "Dorothea
L an g e
lived
in s tin ctively
...
photog raphed
s pon tan eous ly....
"8
At other times s he is des cribed as a
piece
of white
photos en s itive paper
or "like an un ex-
pos ed
film,"
on to which
lig ht
an d s hadow marked
impres s ion s .'
Her
photog raphs
con s is t
dis proportion ately
of
portraits ,
a form often des cribed as
particularly
femin in e,
con s is -
ten t with the obs ervation that women are
un iquely
in teres ted in
pers on ality
an d
private
emotion s . Her FSA
colleag ue
Edwin
Ros s kam
called her "a kin d of a
s ain t."'1
T he critic
Georg e
Elliott
expres s ed
the common
imag in in g
of female artis ts as
pas s ively receptive:
"For an artis t like Dorothea
L an g e
the
makin g
of a
g reat, perfect, an on ymous imag e
is a
trick of
g race,
about which s he can do little
beyon d makin g
hers elf available for that
g ift
of
g race.""
T hes e
g en dered
an d
in s ultin g
as s es s men ts of
L an g e's photog raphy
in form the
frequen t
criticis m of her work as s en timen tal. William
Stott,
Maren
Stan g e,
an d
Jacquelin e
Ellis ,
for
example,
make that
critique.
T hat s he s howed
people
who worked with-an d lived
off--the earth rather than in factories or offices n o doubt con tributed to the whiff of s en -
timen tality-even thoug h
on e aim of her work was to
fals ify
a s en timen tal view of farm-
in g .
Critics , moreover,
common ly
as s ociate
s en timen tality
with matern alis m
particularly,
makin g
it a female foible. T he
Aperture
review of her 1966 Mus eum of Modern Art s how
attributed her s ucces s to her "matern al con cern for
thin g s
of this world" an d to
"creatin g
un ivers al forms of human
feelin g throug h
an in s tin ctive artis t's awaren es s ."'2
L an g e's
bos s
at the
FSA,
Roy Stryker,
referred to her n ot
on ly
as a mother but as a
matriarch.'3
Man y
photog raphers
s hared a con s ervative view of the
proper
divis ion of labor in
photog raphy.
Walker
Evan s ,
for
example,
talked of
"photog raphin g
babies " as a
s yn on ym
for
s ellin g
out
artis tic
in teg rity."4
But the
ten den cy
toward
s en timen tality
in
FSA
photog raphy
derived
from the
ag en cy's
drive to en n oble the
poor
an d down trodden an d was eviden t in
photo-
g raphs by
both men an d women .
Of
cours e,
there were
g en dered
s ources of
L an g e's photog raphy-how
could there n ot
be? But
femin in ity
is n o more in s tin ctive or "n atural" than
mas culin ity. L an g e,
far from
pas s ively receptive,
was an as s ertive vis ual
in tellectual,
s uperbly dis ciplin ed
an d s elf-con -
s cious ,
workin g s ys tematically
to
develop
a
photog raphy
that could be
maximally
com-
mun icative an d
revealin g .
T o do
this ,
s he
acquired
con s iderable
kn owledg e
about
ag ri-
cultural labor.
8
Chris topher
Cox, in troduction to Dorothea
L an g e, by
Dorothea
L an g e
(New York, 1981), 5.
9
Wes ton
Naef in terview
by
T heres e
Heyman ,
in Dorothea
L an g e: Photog raphs from
theJ.
Paul
Getty
Mus eum, ed.
Judith
Keller
(L os
An g eles ,
2002),
101.
10
Edwin Ros s kam an d L ouis e Ros s kam in terview
by
Richard K.
Doud,
Aug .
3, 1965,
tran s cript, pp.
30-31
(Archives
of American
Art,
Smiths on ian
In s titution ,
Was hin g ton ,
D.C.).
" Mus eum of Modern
Art,
Dorothea
L an g e
(New York, 1977),
7.
12William
Stott,
Documen tary Expres s ion
an d
T hirties
America
(New York, 1973).
Maren
Stan g e, Symbols ofldeal
L ife:
Social
Documen tary Photog raphy
in
America, 1890-1950
(Cambridg e, En g .,
1989).
Jacquelin e
Ellis ,
Silen t Wit-
n es s es :
Repres en tation s of Workin g -Clas s
Women in the Un ited States
(Bowlin g
Green , 1998).
Aperture
review
quoted
in Catherin e L .
Pres ton ,
"In
Retros pect:
T he Con s truction an d Commun ication of a Nation al Vis ual
Memory"
(Ph.D. dis s .,
Un ivers ity
of
Pen n s ylvan ia,
1995), 264-65.
13
Ben Shahn
quotation
from Ben Shahn in terview
by
Richard K.
Doud,
Aug .
3, 1965,
tran s cript, p.
13
(Ar-
chives of American
Art); Roy Stryker
in terview
by
Doud, Oct. 17, 1963,
tran s cript, p.
8,
ibid.
14
Shahn
in terview, 23-24.
T he
Photog rapher
as
703
T he
FSA,
firs t called the Res ettlemen t
Admin is tration ,
was created in
April
1935 as an
auton omous New Deal
ag en cy,
a coun termove to a
purg e
of
prog res s ives
from the De-
partmen t
of
Ag riculture.
In
in itiatin g
the
ag en cy,
Rexford
T ug well,
as
un ders ecretary
of
ag riculture,
was
attemptin g
to treat
ag ricultural
laborers as a
part
of America's
workin g
clas s .15
T he
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture
n ever had a divis ion devoted to labor-a much-
repeated joke
in the FSA
was
that the
departmen t
kn ew how
man y hog s
there were in the
Un ited States but n ot how
man y
farm workers -an d had
lon g
been domin ated
by larg e
farm
own ers .'"
So
T ug well
hired
photog raphy
en thus ias t
Roy Stryker
to create a more
in clus ive
imag e
of American farmers .
Stryker
as s embled a
g roup
of
photog raphers
who
collectively
combin ed excellen t
photog raphy
with
pas s ion ate
democratic
s ympathies
an d
then allowed them con s iderable latitude with their cameras . T he
project
created a vis ual
en cyclopedia
n ot
on ly
of the
depres s ion 's
rural devas tation but als o of rural work an d
life. It
ultimately produced
s everal hun dred thous an d
photog raphs ,
un til the
project
was
abolis hed in 1942.~7
Althoug h
n either
T ug well
n or
Stryker
in ten ded
it,
the FSA
s ome-
times
appears
as on e of s everal
federally
fun ded arts
projects ,
an d this con text has veiled its
focus on
ag riculture.
It is true that it s hared with other New Deal arts a
populis t
n ation al-
is t
s tyle
an d
con ten t,
in cludin g
an
emphas is
on the rural an d the
repres en tation al.
Mod-
ern is m,
that
quin tes s en tially
urban
European import,
was
dis courag ed, althoug h photog -
raphers
in
particular, L an g e
in cluded,
experimen ted
with it. Abs tract art was forbidden .
American ization reached even the Mus eum of Modern
Art,
where
Holg er
Cahill took over
temporarily
from Alfred H. Barr
Jr.
in 1932 an d
beg an
to s how American
art;
L in coln
Kirs tein curated an exhibit of
murals ,
s ome of which
en rag ed
the trus tees . T hat orien tation
als o
appeared
in the rus tic
reg ion alis m
s o eviden t in
pain tin g s , n otably
murals ,
an d in the
Works
Prog res s Admin is tration -produced
local
g uides .
T he New Deal arts
projects
aimed
in
part
to revers e the
drain in g
of cultural res ources to
big
cities an d decreas e the res ultan t
alien ation of the artis t from the
"people,"
who
pres umably
lived in s maller
population
cen -
ters .
"We on the
project
n o
lon g er
work . .. is olated from
s ociety,"
on e artis t
proclaimed.
"We have a clien t. Our clien t is the American
people."
But that artis t was Girolamo Pic-
coli,
an urban
immig ran t.
His words
s ymbolized
the un res olved ten s ion s
packed
in to New
Deal n ation alis m about what American n es s
was ,
an d
they
remin d us that much of the
New Deal roman ce with farms an d s mall town s was an urban
product.'8
FSA
photog raphers
overcame that roman ticis m to s ome
deg ree
as a res ult of
Stryker's
in s is ten ce that
they
learn about American
ag riculture.
He fed them
readin g as s ig n men ts ,
15 T he Res ettlemen t Admin is tration was tran s ferred to the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture
an d ren amed FSA in 1937.
T he
was tran s ferred to the Office of War In formation in 1942. For
s implicity's
s ake,
in this ar-
ticle I refer to all three avatars
as
FSA. On the creation of the
FSA, s ee Baldwin ,
Poverty
an d
Politics , 81-83.
16
Ros s kam
an d Ros s kam
in terview;
Calvin Ben ham Baldwin in terview
by
Doud,
Feb.
25, 1965,
tran s cript
(mi-
crofilm: reel
3418) (Archives
of American
Art).
17 L an g e's papers
in the Oaklan d Mus eum als o in clude
approximately forty
thous an d
n eg atives ,
an d
n eg atives
from her work for other
g overn men t ag en cies
are hous ed in the Nation al Archives .
18
T here was on e Works
Prog res s
Admin is tration
g uide
for each of the
forty-eig ht
s tates
plus
volumes for
Alas ka,
Puerto Rico,
New
En g lan d,
the Min n es ota Arrowhead
coun try,
but
on ly
four urban
location s -Erie,
Pen n s ylvan ia,
New
Orlean s , L ouis ian a,
New York
City,
an d
Cin cin n ati,
Ohio. Girolamo Piccoli
quoted
in
Jon athan
Harris , Fed-
eral
Art an d Nation al Culture:
T he
Politics
oflden tity
in New Deal
America
(Cambridg e, En g .,
1995), 58.
704 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
s tatis tics ,
an d
lectures ,
orien tin g
them to rural
poverty
an d
cris is ,
n ot rus tic
beauty
or bu-
colic
peace.
Dorothea
L an g e
foun d her
way
to
documen tary photog raphy
on her own . Born in 1895
in to a middle-clas s
family
in
Hoboken ,
New
Jers ey,
s he
mig rated
to San Fran cis co
where,
from 1918 to
1935,
s he earn ed a
livin g
for hers elf an d her
family
as a
portrait photog -
rapher.
Her
roman tic,
flatterin g , in dividualizin g ,
an d
s lig htly
un con ven tion al
portraits
drew a
pros perous ,
elite,
hig h-culture
clien tele. Married to a
leadin g
Wes t Coas t
pain ter,
Mayn ard
Dixon ,
s he s ocialized in bohemian artis tic circles . Her crowd was what we
would
today
call
s ocially
liberal,
but n ot attun ed to
politics .
T hat
beg an
to
chan g e
as the
depres s ion deepen ed,
s ocial
protes t
movemen ts
g rew,
an d the art market
plun g ed, leavin g
man y
artis ts
pen n iles s .
She
g rew impatien t s imultan eous ly
with her
deman din g
hus ban d
an d her con fin emen t to her
portrait
s tudio. T his
res tles s n es s ,
coupled
with the
depres -
s ion declin e in her
bus in es s ,
s en t her out to the s treets of San Fran cis co to
photog raph
what was
happen in g :
homeles s men
s leepin g
on
park
ben ches ,
crowds
lin in g up
at relief
s tation s ,
s trikers an d the
un employed demon s tratin g
an d s ometimes even
battlin g
the
police.
Paul
T aylor,
an
ag ricultural
econ omis t at the
Un ivers ity
of
Californ ia,
Berkeley,
s aw her
photog raphs
an d
employed
her for the Californ ia State
Emerg en cy
Relief Ad-
min is tration in
1935,
then made s ure that her
photog raphs
were n oticed in
Was hin g ton ,
D.C. When
Stryker
s aw
them,
he
recog n ized
their
power
an d
immediately
hired her. T he
mos t
experien ced
of the FSA
photog raphers
an d the
on ly
on e who did n ot work out of the
Was hin g ton ,
D.C., office,
s he con tin ued to live in Californ ia.19
She divorced Dixon an d married Paul
T aylor
in
1935,
an d in all her work from then
on ,
her
photog raphic s en s ibility
an d
s trateg y
were in debted to his
political-in tellectual
approach. T aylor
had s tudied labor econ omics un der
John
Common s at the
Un ivers ity
of Wis con s in an d con n ected with Paul
Kellog g
an d other
Prog res s ive
Era s ocial reform-
ers at Hull Hous e. In the tradition of Floren ce
Kelley
an d
Sophon is ba Breckin ridg e,
he
combin ed
rig orous
res earch with
public advocacy.
He devoted hims elf in the 1920s to
s tudyin g
Mexican
immig ration
an d labor in the Un ited
States ,
the firs t
An g lo
s cholar to
do
s o.20
As much an
ethn og rapher
as an
econ omis t,
he talked
with,
lis ten ed
to,
an d even
photog raphed
his
s ubjects ,
while als o
collectin g
data about their
immig ration
an d work
his tories . He commun icated to
L an g e
his
quin tes s en tially Prog res s ive
faith that un cover-
in g
facts would
produce g ood,
or at leas t
better,
policy.
He believed that the s tate
oug ht
to
reg ulate
the labor market an d that
policy
s hould be made
by
well-educated,
well-
in formed,
objective experts .
Sin ce
T aylor
believed that his duties as a s ocial s cien tis t in -
cluded
advocacy
as well as
in ves tig ation ,
he als o
believed,
as did
man y
other
Prog res s ive
reformers ,
that res earch s hould be
packag ed
an d
pres en ted
s o as to reach a broad
public.
He un ders tood
jus t
what
Roy Stryker
was
tryin g
to do. So he devis ed a res earch
plan
that
19 L in da Gordon an d
Gary Y. Okihiro, eds .,
Impoun ded:
Dorothea
L an g e
an d the Cen s ored
Imag es of apan es e
American In tern men t
(New York, 2005), 5-45; Dorothea
L an g e, http: //en .wikipedia.org /wiki/Dorothea_L an g e
(Sept.
13, 2006).
20
For a
biog raphical
s ketch of Paul
T aylor,
s ee American Nation al
Biog raphy, Supplemen t
2,
s .v.
"T aylor,
Paul
Schus ter." Als o available
by s ubs cription
at American Nation al
Biog raphy
On lin e,
http: //www.an b.org /. T aylor's
were
"the
mos t s en s itive an d
pen etratin g
s tudies of
evolvin g
Mexican American -Mexican
immig ran t relation s hips ,"
ac-
cordin g
to David
Gutierrez,
Walls an d Mirrors : Mexican American s , Mexican
Immig ran ts ,
an d the Politics
ofEthn icity
(Berkeley,
1995),
64.
T he
Photog rapher
as
705
en abled him to travel with
L an g e, in terviewin g , explain in g , takin g
his own
n otes ,
an d
poin tin g
out
photog raphic s ubjects .
L an g e's photog raphic trajectory metaphorically
revers ed the his torical
trajectory
ofAmer-
ican
ag riculture.
She
beg an
in 1935 in
Californ ia,
where mechan ization an d in dus trial
ag riculture
were mos t
developed,
then traveled to the s outhern
plain s
where
man y
ten an t
farmers an d
remain in g
s mallholders were
bein g
devas tated,
an d moved from there to the
s outheas tern s tates where
ag riculture
remain ed mos t
primitive
an d the labor
s ys tem
was
at leas t as brutal as that in Californ ia's fields .
T he
fun damen tal,
irreducible
problem
of labor
s upply
for Californ ia's
ag ribus in es s
was
that
hug e in puts
of workers were n eeded for s hort
s pells
of
time-typically
at harves t-
while for mos t of the
year on ly
a
tin y
fraction of that labor force could do the
n eces s ary
labor. For
example,
in
1935,
g rowers required
198,000
han ds in
September
but
46,000
in
Jan uary.
In the fruit bus in es s the imbalan ce was twice as bad:
130,000
n eeded at
peak,
16,000
at
troug h.21
T hus
mig ratory
farm labor s eemed es s en tial. Farm workers traveled
throug hout
the s tate
followin g
the various harves t s eas on s an d remain ed
un employed
for
mon ths at a time.
As
L an g e beg an
to documen t that
s ys tem,
her firs t reaction was horror.
"T hey
were
... camped
in an
open
field,
without s helter of
an y
kin d. Mother
preg n an t,
with 5
s tarv-
in g
children .
T hey
were
eatin g g reen
on ion s , raw,
an d that was all
they
had."22
Her
pho-
tog raphs
s how her
res pon s e.
T heir
ten ts , lean -tos ,
an d s hacks are
put tog ether
with old
can vas ,
g un n y
s acks ,
cardboard or wooden
boxes ,
s craps
of lin oleum an d s heet metal.
T he Mexican workers have woven
brus h,
palm,
an d other
plan t
material to make
jacales
(huts ),
an d thes e often
provided
better cover than the
An g los ' improvis ation s .
T he main
furn iture is wooden boxes . T here are of cours e n o
floors ,
n o
in s ulation ,
n o
s creen s ,
n o
toilets . As thes e
ag ricultural valleys
have little tree
cover,
there is n o
way
to relieve on es elf
dis creetly,
an d there is human excremen t in what are
effectively backyards . Nearby,
chil-
dren
play
in mud an d women take water for
cookin g
an d
was hin g
from rain
puddles
an d
irrig ation
ditches .
Slig htly
older children work in the
fields ,
others
loiter,
depres s ed,
with-
out
s hoes ,
others
s leep
un der
rag s
on
filthy
mattres s es or on the
g roun d.
L an g e's objective
was n ot
on ly
to documen t
poverty
but to s how als o the
ag ricultural
s ys tem
from which it
g rew.
She us ed the
rhythm
of the
plowed
ruts an d
ridg es
an d the
rows of
plan ts
to in creas e
vis ually
the s ize of the fields in her s hots . She in cluded
tin y,
far-
off farm
workers , mules ,
an d tractors in thos e s hots to in dicate the s cale of the farms . She
s howed the
impers on ality
of thos e
en terpris es
where workers n ever met the bos s an d did
n ot kn ow
man y
of their co-workers .23
21
T he un even deman d for labor was much
g reater
in Californ ia than
in ,
for
example,
the
Southeas t,
becaus e
Californ ia's relative freedom from weeds an d
pes ts
mean t that its farms n eeded les s labor before harves t time. State
Relief Admin is tration of Californ ia,
Mig ratory
L abor in
Californ ia
(San Fran cis co, 1936),
8.
22
Dorothea L an g e, field n otes ,
Dorothea
L an g e
Archive
(Oaklan d Mus eum, Oaklan d, Calif.).
23 For example, Dorothea
L an g e,
"Salin as
Valley,
Californ ia.
L arg e
Scale, Commercial
Ag riculture,"
Feb. 1939,
photog raph,
L C-USF347-018899-E, FSA-OWI Collection (Prin ts
an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion ,
L ibrary
of
Con g res s ,
Was hin g ton ,
D.C.);
Dorothea
L an g e,
"Salin as
Valley,
Californ ia.
Filipin o Boys T hin n in g
L ettuce,"
Feb.
1939,
pho-
tog raph,
L C-USF347-019432,
ibid. T he
L ibrary
of
Con g res s
us es a
variety
of
n umberin g s ys tems ;
this article us es
the
s ys tem
at the
followin g
Web s ite:
L ibrary
of
Con g res s ,
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion ,
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
On lin e
Catalog : Searchin g Fs A/Office
of War In formation
(owl)
Black-an d-White
Neg atives , http: //lcweb2.loc
.g ov/pp/fs aquery.html.
706 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
Fig ure
2.
"Filipin os Cuttin g
L ettuce.
Salin as ,
Californ ia."
Jun e
1935. Photo
by
Doro-
thea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Col-
lection , L C-USF347-000826-D.
At the heart of her Californ ia s tudies was field labor. She illus trated how workers
g rew
Californ ia's
crops .
She made 177
photog raphs documen tin g
the
production
of
cotton ,
171 of
peas ,
54 of
carrots , 32 of
potatoes ,
41 of
lettuce, 9 of
bean s , 7 of
wheat, 7 of cauli-
flower, 9 of cattle
ran chin g -an d
thos e n umbers are un deres timates .24 A
g reat proportion
of the work s he illus trated was
s toop
labor. In thos e
photog raphs , people
are ben t over
pickin g
cotton ,
pullin g
carrots ,
dig g in g potatoes , thin n in g
lettuce,
cuttin g cabbag e
an d
cauliflower. T heir bodies are
part
of the
earth,
their faces hidden from view
by
their fo-
cus on the
g roun d
an d the hats
they
wear to ward off the
s tin g in g , dizzyin g
s un an d heat.
L an g e
was fas cin ated
by
the
compos ition
of thos e
vis tas ,
an d
man y
of thos e
photog raphs
are beautiful abs traction s : the curvature of the
ups ide-down
Us of the human bodies
s tan din g
in the
s eemin g ly
en dles s rows of
plan ts ,
s ilhouetted
ag ain s t
the immen s e
s ky.
At
other times s he
s ymbolized
labor with
imag es
of
carryin g .
She s howed workers
drag g in g
cotton
s acks ,
lug g in g
bus hel
bas kets ,
wooden
crates ,
armloads of tied carrots . T heir bodies
lean far off cen ter to
man ag e
the
weig ht.25
(See
fig ures
2 an d
3.)
24 T he n umber of
photog raphs
is an un deres timate becaus e in ferior an d
n ear-duplicate
s hots are n ot
eas ily
acces -
s ible in the
L ibrary
of
Con g res s
collection , an d,
g iven
the en ormous n umber of
photog raphs , my
s earch could
on ly
brin g up
thos e
photog raphs
that had the n ame of the
crop
in the
caption
or title.
25 For the mos t famous
example
of a
photog raph
that s hows
s toop
labor,
s ee
fig ure
2. For an
example
of a
pho-
tog raph
that s hows
carryin g ,
s ee Dorothea
L an g e,
"Picker
carryin g peas
to the
weig hmas ter.
Near San ta Clara, Cali-
forn ia,"
April
1937,
photog raph,
L C-USF34-016470-E, FSA-OWI Collection .
T he
Photog rapher
as
707
Fig ure
3. "Child
of
impoveris hed Neg ro
ten an t
family workin g
on
farm. Alabama."
July
1936. Photo
by
Dorothea
L an g e. Courtes y L ibrary
of Con g res s ,
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collection , L C-
USF34-009261-E.
She con s tructs a vis ual n arrative that takes us to a momen t when clas s con flict becomes
vis ible:
weig hin g .
T he two s ets of in teres ts
are,
by
defin ition ,
oppos ed.
T he
workers wan t
the
hig hes t pos s ible weig ht
for what
they
have
picked,
the
man ag ers
the lowes t. All
par-
ties are
watchin g
each other an d the s cale
in ten s ely.
Sometimes the workers as well as the
weig hmas ters
are
writin g -the
former on much-us ed
s craps
of
paper,
the latter in accoun t
books .26
T he
photos
als o rais ed
ques tion s
about who was
workin g .
She made
poin ted imag es
of
whole
families ,
in cludin g
children an d old
people, doin g heavy
work. Her
caption s
iden -
tify
s ome
s ubjects
as
g ran dmothers ,
les t there be
an y ambig uity
about their
ag es .
T hos e
pictures prompted
furious letters of
den ial,
as when a
coun ty probation
officer claimed
that on e of
L an g e's photog raphs ,
of a child with a cotton s ack
waitin g
to
g o
to work at
7: 00 a.m.,
could n ot have been made
durin g
the s chool term.27
26
For examples of
photog raphs that s how
weig hin g ,
s ee Dorothea
L an g e,
"Small Cotton Farm,
Kern
Coun ty,
Californ ia,"
photog raph,
Nov.
1938, L C-USF347-018639-C, FSA-OWI Collection ; Dorothea
L an g e, "Weig hin g
in
Cotton ,
Southern San
Joaquin Valley,
Californ ia,"
photog raph,
Nov. 1936, L C-USF347-009965-C, ibid.; Doro-
thea
L an g e, "Weig hin g
in
Cotton ,
Southern San
Joaquin Valley,
Californ ia,"
photog raph,
Nov. 1936, L C-USF347-
009960-C,
ibid.
27 C. M.
John s on
to
Rep.
T olan d,
May
2, 1940,
box
9,
Paul S.
T aylor Papers
(Ban croft L ibrary, Un ivers ity
of
Californ ia,
Berkeley).
708 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
But s he als o kn ew that the farm workers s uffered les s from overwork than from n ot
en oug h
work. T heir
problem
was that
g rowers preferred
four hun dred
pickers workin g
for
five
days
to on e hun dred
workin g
for
twen ty days ,
s o
jobs
were
brief.
Growers
deliberately
recruited too
man y
workers ,
both to
keepwag es
low an d to
g uaran tee
a
s peedy
harves t,
without which a farm could s uffer s ubs tan tial los s .
Des pite g rowers '
den ials ,
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture
data s how that Californ ia
ag riculture
had an
overs upply
of labor in all but
three mon ths from 1921 to 1940.28 An other in fluen ce was
mechan ization ,
an d s he docu-
men ted its un even
developmen t
in Californ ia. At the s ame
time,
in differen t
places
in the
s tate,
mules an d tractors were
pullin g plows .
She
photog raphed
other forms of ration al-
ization ,
fin din g
vis ual
metaphors
for the vertical
in teg ration big g rowers
were
in troducin g
-for
example, packin g veg etables
an d fruits
rig ht
in the fields rather than
cartin g
them
to
packin g
hous es or
s heds ,
an d
producin g
their own crates from their own timber lan d
an d lumber mills . In the Soviet Un ion at this
time,
s ocial realis t
photog raphers
an d artis ts
were
makin g imag es
of
heroic,
mon umen tal
peas an ts ,
female as well as
male,
moun ted on
tractors an d even combin es . In
L an g e's pictures
the machin es dwarf the drivers . She s aw
tractors as
part
of the
problem,
n ot the s olution . T his orien tation s howed
des pite
FSA
pres -
s ure to take a more
pos itive approach-after
all,
the machin es had often been
paid
for
by
the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture.29
T he
main FSA
s trateg y, helpin g
farm ten an ts become
own ers ,
made n o s en s e in Califor-
n ia,
an d Paul
T aylor
kn ew
it,
des pite
his
loyalty
to
family
farms . T he farm workers '
plig ht
had con vin ced him that the firs t
s tep
in
remedyin g
workers '
mis ery
had to be
hous in g .
In 1935 this itin eran t
population
had two
option s
for s helter: Some
larg e g rowers
main -
tain ed
camps
with on e-room
cabin s ,
a water
pump,
an d outhous es s hared
by
s cores if n ot
hun dreds -ren tin g
for
$4
to
$8
a mon th.
(Wag es
were
typically
$1.50
a
day
or 15 cen ts
an
hour, an d,
of
cours e,
the workers were
paid on ly
when
they
worked.)30
Or the
mig ran ts
could
join s quatters ' camps
with n o facilities at all. In n either s ituation did the
mig ran ts
have acces s to
s chools ,
medical
care,
leg al
s ervices ,
s uffrag e,
or
pos tal
s ervices .
T hey
had
been excluded from the two
pieces
of New Deal
leg is lation
mos t
importan t
for workers :
the 1935 Social
Security
Act an d Nation al L abor Relation s
Act,
an d in 1938
they
would
be excluded from the Fair L abor Stan dards Act. T his lack of
protection
made them
partic-
ularly
vuln erable becaus e workers who
camped
on
g rowers '
lan d could be evicted
(n ot
to
men tion wors e
retaliation )
at the firs t
s ig n
of
org an izin g
or
holdin g
out for better
wag es .
Without
min imally adequate
an d s ecure
s helter,
other forms of
help
could be delivered.
So
T aylor
had recruited
L an g e
to
help
build the cas e for federal
camps
for
mig ran t
farm
workers .
T aylor
an d
Harry
Drobis ch,
director of Californ ia's Rural Rehabilitation Divi-
s ion ,
believed that
hous in g
for tran s ien t workers could en able further
g overn men t provi-
s ion of
medical, s an itation , education al,
an d n utrition al res ources .31
28 Sen ate Committee on Education an d
L abor, Subcommittee on Sen ate Res olution
266,
Violation s
of
Free
Speech
an d
Rig hts ofL abor, report prepared by
Robert M.
L aFollette Jr.,
Elbert D.
T homas ,
an d David
I. Wals h, 74
Con g .,
1 s es s .,
March 13, 1941,
vol.
47, s erial
17305,
quoted
in L amar B.
Jon es ,
"L abor an d
Man ag emen t
in Cali-
forn ia
Ag riculture,
1864-1964,"
L abor
His tory,
11 (Win ter 1970),
36.
29
Alan L .
Olms tead
an d Paul
W. Rhode,
"An Overview of the
His tory
of Californ ia
Ag riculture," Workin g Paper
89, 1997,
pp.
27-30
(Ag ricultural His tory
Cen ter,
Un ivers ity
of
Californ ia, Davis ). L an dis , "Fate,
Res pon s ibility,
an d 'Natural' Dis as ter Relief," 306. In
1929, tractors were
twen ty
times more
likely
to be us ed on Californ ia farms
than on
Mis s is s ippi
farms . Olms tead an d
Rhode,
"Overview of the
His tory
of Californ ia
Ag riculture,"
10.
30
Harvey
M.
Coverley,
field
repres en tative,
Californ ia Farm Debt
Adjus tmen t
Committee,
report,
March
7,
1935,
folder
24, box 14,
T aylor Papers .
31
On the
camps -for-fieldworkers projects ,
s ee
corres pon den ce amon g T aylor,
Frederick
Soule, Jon athan Gars t,
an d
Harry
Drobis ch, carton s 7 an d 14,
T aylor Papers .
T he
Photog rapher
as
709
When Californ ia officials
rejected
the
camp
idea,
domin ated as
they
were
by
the
big
g rowers , T aylor
looked to the FSA for
fun din g ;
but
his
FSA
s uperiors arg ued
that s uch
camps
would n ot advan ce fun damen tal reform of
ag ricultural
labor relation s an d would
amoun t to a
g overn men t s ubs idy
for the
larg e employers . T aylor
an d Drobis ch kn ew both
claims were
true,
but to
them,
on the
g roun d,
the immediate
priority
had to be
alleviatin g
s ufferin g .
So
T aylor
s et about
creatin g
documen tation that would
chan g e
the
FSA's min d,
an d his
s trateg y
in cluded
us in g
s cores of
L an g e's photog raphs .
T aylor's reports
s n ared a
quick
$20,000
to build
two
FSA
camps . T aylor
wan ted them
put up
fas t,
before the
big g rowers
had time to
org an ize
an
oppos ition ,
s o he
g ot directly
in volved,
choos in g
the s ites an d
appoin tin g
the s taffs . Over the n ext few
years , L an g e
made s cores of
photog raphs
of thes e
camps
an d their res iden ts . T he facilities that created
the
g reates t delig ht
were the baths an d s howers .
When
s omeon e n oted that on e n ew res i-
den t took three baths in on e
day,
s he
replied on ly,
"If
you
had had to
g o
without a bath
as
lon g
as I have
....
"
On e obs erver s aw a woman
jus t
arrived in a
camp
who "s tood un -
der the s hower all
aftern oon ,
cryin g , dryin g
hers elf,
an d
g oin g
back in to the s hower."32
But
T aylor
n ever
g ot
the
fun din g
to exten d the
prog ram en oug h
to meet the tremen dous
n eed,
as he als o failed in his later efforts to
g et protection
for
ag ricultural
workers . Al-
thoug h
he s till
hoped
that the
FSA's
res ettlemen t an d loan
prog rams mig ht help
ten an ts
an d
pos s ibly
farm
wag e
workers
buy
lan d an d become
in depen den t
s mall
farmers ,
he
s urely
kn ew that
n othin g
like that would
happen
s oon in Californ ia.
In deed,
T aylor,
an d
L an g e
with
him,
fell victim to on e of the
occupation al
hazards
of reformers an d
es pecially g overn men t
in s iders :
becomin g
s o
en g ros s ed
in
fig htin g
for
their on e s mall
project
that
they
los t the dis tan ce from which
they
could have s een how
pun y
it was .
T hey
had to work s o hard to es tablis h their s mall
campprog ram
that
they
became
proud
of
limited,
even
in s ig n ifican t,
achievemen ts an d
pus hed
out of min d the
overall balan ce s heet. For
example,
between 1937 an d 1939 the total n umber
of
FSA farm-
purchas e
loan s was
on ly
6,094.
In
T exas ,
out of
15,000
application s , on ly
537 received
loan s . In
Virg in ia,
a total of
41
loan s were
made.33
By
1942 the
FSA was
run n in g on ly
89
camps .
In other
words ,
FSA
prog rams
s erved
on ly
a s mall fraction of thos e in n eed.
Survey
Graphic
s olicited an article on the
camps
from
T aylor,
but when he s en t it
in ,
the editors
foun d it
"s uperficial
an d too
ros y-a
look at a few s mall
s pots
where a little
s omethin g
has been
don e;
but it
dis reg ards
the
big problem." T hey pos ed
the obvious
toug h ques -
tion that
T aylor
avoided: "T o what exten t are
g overn men t
toilets etc a
s ubs idy
of the
larg e
fruit an d
veg etable
in teres ts ?" On the other
han d,
the
pride
an d
optimis m
that led to the
fan tas y
that
they
were
makin g
a den t in the
problem
was als o what
kept L an g e
an d
T ay-
lor
g oin g ,
an d Paul
T aylor
con tin ued to
s upport
farm workers '
s trug g les
un til the
day
he
died in 1983.34
32 Firs t quotation from Eric T homs en , s peech, Jan . 29, 1937, folder 15,
box 4, Farm
Security
Admin is tration
Papers
(Ban croft
L ibrary);
s econ d
quotation
from Ran dall
Jarrell,
in terviewer an d
editor,
"Helen Hos mer: A Radi-
cal Critic of Californ ia
Ag ribus in es s
in the
1930s ,"
types cript,
1992,
p.
43
(Special
Collection s ,
Un ivers ity
of Cali-
forn ia, L os
An g eles ).
33
On
the
FSAloan s , s ee
Neil
Foley, T he
White
Scourg e:
Mexican s , Blacks , an d Poor Whites in T exas Cotton Culture
(Berkeley,
1997), 181;
an d
Kirby,
Rural Worlds L os t, 58.
34
VW
to BA, memo, Jun e
23, 1936,
an d
n .d.,
Kellog g
Folder,
Corres pon den ce
File,
T aylor Papers .
For
example,
T aylor
was s till
s en din g mon ey
an d
len din g
his n ame to the Southern T en an t Farmers ' Un ion in 1981.
T aylor
to
Southern T en an t Farmers ' Un ion , Oct. 2, 1981,
folder
3,
box 11, ibid.
710 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
As
L an g e
an d
T aylor
traveled Californ ia's
roads ,
they
s aw the in flux of
refug ees
from
the dus t bowl before it became n ation al n ews . So in 1936
they
headed to the affected
area.
T aylor
became a
leadin g
New Deal
expert
on the Okie
mig ration ,
"a
churn in g
documen tary en g in e producin g
facts an d s tatis tics
reg ardin g
the
catas trophe,"
as the
Californ ia his torian Kevin Starr
put
it.
T aylor
was als o
offerin g
a n arrative of its roots .35
His
explan ation ,
of
cours e,
was on e that fit his
politics : prog res s ive
in his relian ce on
expert kn owledg e,
New Deal in his commitmen t to
removin g
lan d from cultivation an d
promotin g
federal in ves tmen t in s oil
con s ervation ,
pro-family farmin g
in his con demn a-
tion of
g overn men t
s ubs idies to
larg e-s cale
in dus trial
ag riculture. L an g e
tried to ren der
that
explan ation
vis ual.
T aylor
traced the dus t bowl to the
1870s ,
when white s ettlers
beg an
to erode the "bi-
s on
ecolog y"
that had s us tain ed the Plain s In dian s .
Ig n orin g
the s emiarid con dition s of
the s outhern
plain s -the reg ion
received between half an d on e-third as much rain as did
midwes tern
farmlan d-s ettlers
moved
in ,
es tablis hed
homes teads ,
an d
plowed
the earth.
T hey uprooted
the
prairie g ras s es
that held down the
dry
s oil.
Heavy
rain s in the 1880s
fos tered the delus ion that
plowin g
the lan d
actually
in creas ed the rain fall
(the
s log an
"rain
follows the
plow" g ain ed s upport
even
amon g
s cien tis ts ).
Realty
an d railroad
compan ies
promotin g
s ettlemen t advertis ed an
alleg edly
in exhaus tible s hallow
un derg roun d
water
belt that could be
tapped
an d claimed that
proper plowin g
would
preven t evaporation .
In
fact,
n ew methods of
plowin g
made matters wors e. Earlier
farmers ,
practicin g
what was
then called
drylan d farmin g ,
had us ed lis ter
plows ,
which cen tered a furrow s o that the
loos en ed earth fell
s ymmetrically
to both s ides an d left un tilled
ridg es
as barriers to win d.
When farmers
s oug ht g reater productivity, they
s witched to fas ter
on e-way
dis c
plows ,
which us ed a s et of
parallel s harp
dis ks to
pulverize clumps
an d turn ed all the s oil to on e
s ide. T hes e
on e-way plows
could han dle
heavy
s tubble an d hard s un -baked
s oil,
an d as
mechan ization
advan ced,
they
could be fitted with attachmen ts for
s eedin g .
But
they
left
a fin er s urface
layer,
more vuln erable to the win d.
Soon ,
family
farms were
los in g
out to
larg e-s cale
commercial farms worked
by
ten an ts .
As farm s izes
g rew,
it became cos t-effective to mechan ize. When the
depres s ion
lowered
farm
prices ,
own ers
res pon ded by
further
mechan izin g
an d
dis placin g
ten an ts . Own ers
became
ten an ts ,
ten an ts became
day
laborers .36
So the 1930s
droug hts ,
the wors t in U.S.
his tory,
foun d the earth of the s outhern
plain s
defen s eles s
ag ain s t
win d. Here is Paul
T aylor, writin g
in his
un ique
voice as a hu-
man is t econ omis t with a vis ual
imag in ation
n urtured
by L an g e:
L ike fres h s ores which
open by
over-irritation of the s kin an d clos e un der the
g rowth
of
protective cover,
dus t bowls form an d
heal.
Dus t is n ot n ew on the
Great Plain s ,
but
n ever..,.
has it been s o
pervas ive
an d s o des tructive. Dried
by years
of
droug ht
an d
pulverized by
machin e-drawn
g an g
dis k
plows ,
the s oil was
literally
thrown to
the win ds which
whipped
it in clouds acros s the
coun try.... T hey
loos en ed the hold
35
Kevin
Starr,
En dan g ered
Dreams :
T he Great
Depres s ion
in
Californ ia
(New York, 1996),
233. Brad D.
L ookin g -
bill,
Dus t
Bowl,
us A: Depres s ion
America
an d the
Ecolog ical Imag in ation ,
1929-1941
(Athen s , Ohio, 2001),
32.
36 John Opie,
"Moral
Geog raphy
in
Hig h
Plain s
His tory," Geog raphical
Review, 88
(April
1998), 246-47;
L ook-
in g bill,
Dus t
Bowl,
USA, 12, 17-18. Paul S.
T aylor,
"'What Shall We Do with
T hem?'
Addres s to Common wealth
Club of
Californ ia,
April
15, 1938,"
in On the Groun d in the
T hirties ,
by
Paul S.
T aylor
(Salt
L ake
City,
1983);
Paul
S.
T aylor, "Refug ee
L abor
Mig ration
to
Californ ia, 1937"
[April 1939],
ibid.
T he
Photog rapher
as
711
of s ettlers on the
lan d,
an d like
particles
of dus t drove them
rollin g
down ribbon s
of
hig hway.37
On e can
arran g e L an g e's
dus t bowl
photog raphs accordin g
to
T aylor's ecolog ical s tory.
Firs t comes the earth
its elf.
She
captured
a few dus t
s torms ,
but thes e
imag es
are n ot as
powerful
as thos e of dus t bowl
refug ees ,
n ot even as
powerful
as verbal
des cription s , per-
haps
becaus e the
s wirlin g
dus t makes the
photog raphs
s eem
merely fuzzy.
She
g ot
better
effect from
imag es
of the dun es of
dus t,
the drifts
coverin g
fen ces ,
farm
equipmen t,
s tor-
ag e
cellars ,
even the firs t-floor win dows of hous es . T hen s he s hows us the caus e: in the vas t
des erted
plowed
fields where on ce
prairie g ras s g rew
an d n ow
n othin g g rows ;
or in the
matter-of-fact s hots of men on
tractors ,
plowin g yet ag ain des pite
the
years
of failure.
A s econ d vis ual theme in her
photog raphs ,
des ertion ,
beg in s
with the
parched
fields ,
n aked an d
expos ed,
des erted
by
all
veg etation .
T hen the
pictures
move on to human de-
s ertion . T here are n umerous aban don ed
farmhous es ,
rus tin g plows ,
is olated relics of hu-
man
s ociety.
T here are the vacan t town
s quares ,
the wide midwes tern main s treets
n early
empty
of
vehicles ,
the s tores boarded
up
or with broken win dows . What s he could n ot
s how was that
man y
farm workers had been driven
out,
n ot
by droug ht,
but
by
eviction .
T he s ame forces that created the dus t bowl led to
wides pread
eviction s of
ten an ts ,
en -
courag ed by
the
Ag ricultural Adjus tmen t
Admin is tration 's
paymen ts
to
g rowers
to reduce
their
acreag e
an d to mechan ize.
Man y
of thos e
movin g
wes t were
leavin g
the cities an d
town s where
they
had moved after
los in g
their farms in the
1920s ;
n ow the
droug ht
an d
con tin ued mechan ization
pulled
down town as well as farm
econ omies .38
T hen there is
L an g e's depres s ion s pecialty: dejected
men .
(See
fig ure
4.)
Here s he is
s upplemen tin g T aylor's
accoun t with a
g en der s tory. Everywhere
are idle
g roups
of men
in con vers ation -the
droug ht
area con s is ts of s mall town s where
people
kn ow each other.
T he men
appear by
the s ides of the
empty,
s ilen t main s treets .
T hey
are all thin . Some
s tan d,
s ome
s quat,
s ome lean on cars . Some are in overalls but
man y
in "better"
trous ers ,
clothes for
g oin g
to
town ,
becaus e there is n o farm work for them to do.
T hey
all wear
hats ,
s ome of
s traw,
s ome
fedoras ,
s ome
cowboy
hats .
Man y
atten d
morn in g
movies be-
caus e there is
n othin g
els e to do. T here are n o
women ,
an abs en ce that tells an other
part
of the
g en der s tory:
when there is n either farm work n or
jobs
for the
men ,
an d
they
while
away
the time in town with each
other,
the women are
workin g
hard,
even harder than
ever:
tryin g
to
keep
homes , bodies ,
clothin g ,
food an d water
clean ;
tryin g
to
put tog ether
meals with little food in the larder or
mon ey
in the coffee
can ;
tryin g
to
keep
an imals
alive an d to
g ive
human
s pirits
a cus hion
ag ain s t cripplin g depres s ion . L an g e
is
s howin g
us how
g en der s ys tems
tran s form un der en viron men tal an d econ omic
pres s ure.
T his was
ris ky photog raphy,
an d
man y
other
documen tary photog raphers
con cen trated on the
elderly,
becaus e
imag es
of idle able-bodied men could be read as
lazy, malin g erin g
men
lackin g
in work ethic.39
Next, thes e "Okie" families become
mig ran ts -an d they
are
overwhelmin g ly
families ,
n ot
s in g le
men ,
in dicatin g
the
perman en ce
of their move. T here are s everal vis ual
tropes
17
Dorothea
L an g e
an d Paul Schus ter
T aylor,
American Exodus : A Record
of
Human Eros ion
(New York, 1939),
102.
38
T aylor,
"'What Shall We Do with T hem?"';
T aylor, "Refug ee
L abor
Mig ration
to
Californ ia,
1937"; James
N.
Greg ory,
American Exodus :
T he
Dus t Bowl
Mig ration
an d Okie Culture in
Californ ia
(New York, 1989), 13-17.
39
T his poin t
is
made
by
Colleen McDan n ell,
Picturin g
Faith:
Photog raphy
an d the Great
Depres s ion
(New
Ha-
ven , 2004),
38.
712 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
Fig ure
4.
"Waitin g
for the
s emimon thly
relief checks at
Calipatria, Imperial Valley,
Cali-
forn ia.
T ypical s tory:
fifteen
years ag o they
own ed farms in Oklahoma. L os t them
throug h
foreclos ure when cotten
prices
fell after the war. Became ten an ts an d
s harecroppers .
With
the
droug ht
an d dus t
they
came
Wes t, 1934-1937. Never before left the
coun ty
where
they
were born . Now
althoug h
in Californ ia over a
year they
haven 't been
con tin uous ly
res iden t
in
an y s in g le coun ty lon g en oug h
to become a
leg al
res iden t. Reas on :
mig ratory ag ricultural
laborers ." March 1937. Photo
by
Dorothea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collection , L C-USF34-016271-C DL C.
T he
Photog rapher
as
713
Fig ure
5. "Mis s ouri
family
of
five,
s even mon ths from the
droug ht
area.
'Broke,
baby
s ick,
car trouble.'
U.S.
99 n ear
T racy,
Californ ia." Feb. 1937. Photo
by
Dorothea
L an g e.
Courtes y L ibrary of Con g res s ,
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collection , L C-
USF34-T O1-016452-E.
in the clas s ic
L an g e photog raphs
of the Okie
droug ht refug ees :
dis tan ce s hots of auto car-
avan s
(as
they s topped,
becaus e
L an g e's
film
s peed
could n ot catch them in
motion ),
the
pas s en g ers
in their
rag g ed
clothes
s tan din g
or
s ittin g
outs ide the hot cars as
they
wait-for
water,
for a
repair,
for a us ed auto
part; clos e-ups
of how the
jalopies
are
packed-hous e-
hold
belon g in g s
tied to or
han g in g
from
every
s urface of the car. Sometimes the vehicles
are s mall
pickup
trucks with homemade can vas roofs
s helterin g
the
people
in the back-
hen ce the title
T aylor
us ed in an
article,
"Ag ain
the Covered
Wag on ."
Other
imag es
fo-
cus on the families thems elves -the n ew
pion eers , L an g e
an d
T aylor
wan ted to
s ug g es t.
T he
mig ran ts
in her
photog raphs
are n ot
paupers
but
res ourceful,
hard-workin g people.40
T heir
trips may
n ot be
quite
as
dan g erous
as thos e of the
previous cen tury,
but
they
are ex-
tremely
arduous .
T he
men are
hag g ard,
n ot
on ly
worried but s ometimes a bit
g las s y-eyed,
pos s ibly
on the
edg e
of
crackin g ; they may
well be
s ufferin g
from
dehydration
or heat-
s troke.
(It
was
us ually
s ummer when
L an g e
was on the road in the
droug ht
areas .) T he
men are
always drivin g .
Women , children ,
an d
elderly
folk crowd in
els ewhere,
man y
of
40 For a us eful con tras t, compare L an g e's portraits
to thos e
by
Walker Evan s or
by Marg aret
Bourke-White in
Ers kin e
Caldwell
an d
Marg aret
Bourke-White,
You Have Seen
T heir
Faces
(New York, 1937).
Paul S.
T aylor, "Ag ain
the Covered
Wag on ," Survey Graphic,
24
(July
1935), 348-51.
714
T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
them
holdin g
babies ,
man y feedin g
babies with bottle or breas t. T he children have
dirty
faces ,
leg s ,
feet,
an d
clothin g .
T hen
the families
camp,
often
rig ht
on the s ide of the road.
L an g e
mean t thes e im-
ag es
to
s upport
the FSA
prog ram
of
providin g g overn men t camps
for the
mig ran ts .
We s ee
how hard an d
in g en ious ly
the
mig ran ts
work to create
livin g s pace:
s helter from a can vas
s trun g
to
trees ,
open
fires or s mall
s toves ,
improvis ed cookin g s ys tems , multitas kin g
ves -
s els us ed for
cookin g ,
dis h
was hin g ,
clothes
was hin g , bathin g .
On ce
camped,
the women
are at the
family
cen ter,
workin g
an d
directin g
the work of others . Men an d older
boys
may
be abs en t on erran ds or
lookin g
for work.
Occas ion ally, on ly
children are in the
camp, perhaps
becaus e adults an d
youth
have foun d work an d are in the fields . T he older
children look after
youn g er
children .
Everyon e's clothin g
is
rag g ed
an d
dirty;
it is hard
en oug h
to
g et
water to
drin k,
let alon e to was h.
In
early
1936 the L os
An g eles
chief of
police
ordered that the
mig ran ts
be turn ed back
at the s tate lin e-an un con s titution al action
by
an official with n o
leg al juris diction
out-
s ide L os
An g eles .
Nevertheles s ,
his s taff
operated
this "bum blockade" for two mon ths be-
fore a court
s topped
it. However
prepos terous
this
es capade,
L os
An g eles
had a
jus tifiable
g rievan ce: mig ran t
farm workers '
on ly
chan ce at relief was to
g et
to a
city,
but Pres iden t
Roos evelt had
s us pen ded
federal relief fun ds in
1935,
jus t
as the Okie
mig ration
in ten s i-
fied. T he
mig ran ts
were
larg ely
farmers ,
but the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture
had
n othin g
to offer them.
L an g e
tried to
photog raph
the blockade but did n ot s ucceed in
makin g
it
vis ual,
s o s he relied on words .
"T hey
won 't
g o," L an g e
wrote in on e of her
caption s , quot-
in g
a cas e worker in
Imperial Coun ty charg ed
with
tryin g
to s en d the tran s ien ts back to
where
they
came
from,
"un til
they g et
s o
hun g ry
that there's
n othin g
els e for them to do.
T hey
won 't
g o-n ot twen ty-five percen t
will
g o."4'
In the s ummers of
1936, 1937, 1938,
an d
1939,
L an g e
an d
T aylor
worked
tog ether
in
every
s outhern s tate
except Ken tucky
an d Wes t
Virg in ia.
Here, too,
they
were dis cover-
in g
a
poverty
remote from their
experien ce.
Her
photog raphy
was on ce
ag ain s ys tematic
an d
arg umen tative.
As in the
droug ht
area,
s he covered en viron men tal
mis us e,
but n ot
on ly by
farmers . We s ee n ot
on ly hug e g ullies
with tree roots
expos ed by
s oil eros ion but
als o abus es
by
lumber
compan ies ,
s uch as on e
thirty-s even -mile
s wath of cutover with n o
replan tin g
whats oever,
an d the res ultan t
un employmen t
of
3,000
men an d devas tation of
lumber-mill
town s .42
Here s he
emphas ized
lack of mechan ization
amon g
other forms of
backwardn es s :
wag on s
an d
plows pulled by
mules , oxen ,
men an d
boys ,
an d lack of bas ic
s ervices -mail
delivery,
s chools ,
s tores -particularly
for blacks . If the
major mas culin ity
theme of the
droug ht
area was
dejection ,
in the South it was s weat-dren ched labor.
Her
caption s s pecified
econ omic relation s . She n otes the
man y ways
that
plan ters
an d
man ag ers
cheated. She
explain s croplien s , debt
peon ag e,
an d low
wag es -$1
a
day
for
hoein g
cotton 6: 00 a.m. to 7: 00
p.m.
T here is n o free market in labor. T he
plan tation s
did
little to mechan ize becaus e the
extremely low-wag e econ omy g ave plan ters
n o in cen tive
to in creas e
productivity.
So
L an g e
is more
s ympathetic
to tractors here: "On e man an d a
41
Paul
T aylor, "Mig ratory
Farm L abor in the Un ited States ,"
Mon thly
L abor Review, 44
(March, 1937), 537-49.
L eon ard
Jos eph
L eader,
L os
An g eles
an d the Great
Depres s ion
(New York, 1991).
42 For
example,
s ee Dorothea
L an g e,
"T ractor on the
Aldridg e
Plan tation ,
Mis s is s ippi," photog raph, Jun e
1937,
L C-USF347-017099-C, FSA-OWI Collection .
T he
Photog rapher
as
715
Fig ure
6. "Double
log
cabin of
Neg ro
s hare ten an ts who rais e tobacco.
Family
of
eig ht
has
been on this
place
s ix or s even
years .
Pers on
Coun ty,
North Carolin a."
July
1939. Photo
by
Dorothea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collec-
tion , L C-USF34-020029-C.
four-row cultivator does the work of
eig ht
men an d
eig ht
mules un der the on e man -on e
mule
s ys tem
which is s till common ." But s he does remin d us that mechan ization con s ti-
tuted a kin d of
s hock-therapy primitive
accumulation ,
with the hun dreds of thous an ds of
eviction s that res ulted: "T his man was a ten an t on the s ame farm for
eig hteen years .
He
has s ix children . T his
year
he was forced in to s tatus of
day
laborer on the s ame farm. T he
farm own er
employed twen ty-three
ten an t families las t
year.
T his
year,
the s ame
acreag e,
us in g
tractors ,
requires
s even
families ."43
T he eviction s n ot
on ly
left
people
homeles s but
als o
deprived
them of
veg etable g arden s ,
wood
g atherin g ,
an d
hun tin g
an d
fis hin g rig hts
on which
they
had
depen ded
for
s us ten an ce,
much as
man y European s
were
deprived
durin g
the
eig hteen th-
an d
n in eteen th-cen tury
en clos ure movemen t. Her
photog raphs
s how tobacco or cotton
g rowin g literally up
to the fron t door of ten an ts ' hous es .
L an g e
documen ted
hous in g , althoug h on ly
from the outs ide.
(She
rarely
us ed flas h-
bulbs ,
becaus e s he did n ot like their effect on her
s ubjects .44)
T hes e
photog raphs
revealed
appallin g in equalities .
It was
on ly
in the South that s he ven tured to
photog raph
the
pros perous ;
s he made
pictures
of
g ran d plan tation
hous es ,
s ome in
decay
an d s ome s till
s hin in g
with wealth. But her
photog raphs
of
poor people's hous in g
were
by
n o mean s all
imag es
of wretchedn es s . L ike
every
other FSA
photog rapher,
s he made s ome Walker Ev-
" Dorothea
L an g e,
"T his Man Was a T en an t on the Same Farm for
Eig hteen
Years ... Ellis
Coun ty,
T exas ,"
pho-
tog raph, Jun e 1937, L C-USF347-017152-C, ibid.
44 Dorothea
L an g e
in terview
by
Doud,
May
22, 1964,
tran s cript, p.
15 (Archives
of American
Art).
716 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
an s -like
photog raphs
of vern acular
architecture,
often with the obvious
purpos e
of s how-
in g
the care an d s kill s ome
croppers
an d occas ion al s mall farm
own ers ,
black an d
white,
us ed in
buildin g
an d
carin g
for their homes . At other times
dis repair
an d dis order domi-
n ate the
pictures .
T he s ame
ran g e
did n ot characterize her
portraits :
s he made
on ly
flatter-
in g , dig n ifyin g photog raphs
of
s ubjects .
T his was of cours e her s tudio-learn ed
s kill,
but it
als o
expres s ed
her
democratic,
Popular
Fron t
politics -en n oblin g
the
poor.
For three s outhern
ag ricultural products -cotton ,
tobacco,
an d
turpen tin e-L an g e
tried to illus trate the en tire labor
proces s , attemptin g
to commun icate
res pect
for the la-
bor an d s kill of the farm workers . On e
eig ht
hun dred-word
caption
in s tructed the reader
in tobacco
g rowin g ,
from
primin g
to
firin g
the barn s .
Subject: Puttin g
in T obacco:
T his
proces s
is als o kn own as
"s avin g "
tobacco;
the word
"primin g "
is als o s ometimes
applied
to the en tire
proces s , althoug h s trictly
this term des cribes the actual removal
of the leaves from the
plan t.
T he
proces s
is als o kn own as
"curin g
tobacco,"
althoug h
here
ag ain
this term
applies s trictly on ly
to on e
particular part
of the
proces s .
1. "PRIMING."
Beg in n in g
at the bottom of the
plan t,
the leaves are
s tripped;
us u-
ally
two or three bottom leaves are removed at on e
primin g . On ly
the
ripe
leaves are
primed,
an d
ripen es s
is determin ed
by
the color of the leaf. When
ripe,
the leaves
are
pale yellow
in
color,
althoug h they
are often difficult to
dis tin g uis h
from the
g reen
leaves . Hen ce the
job
of
primin g
is
s omethin g
of an
art,
which is left to the
men of the
family
or to thos e "women folks " who are s killed at it. In the field
pic-
ture,
the men are
primin g
for the s econ d
time,
the "firs t
primin g s ,"
or s an d
leaves ,
havin g
been removed. Note the method of
removin g
the
leaves ,
the man n er in
which
they
are
held,
an d the care which is exercis ed to
preven t bruis in g
or
breakin g .
[a
lis t of
11
n eg atives
follows ]
2. "SL IDING T OBACCO T O T HE BARN." T he
primin g s
are
tran s ported
to
the
barn s ,
where
they
will be tied or
s trun g ,
in the "s lide"
(als o
called
s led).
Note
con s truction of the s lide-frame of wooden
s trips ,
on a
pair
of wooden run n ers . T he
body
of the s lide is made of Guan o
s acks ,
an d the en tire s tructure is n arrow
en oug h
to run between the rows of tobacco without
breakin g
the leaves . In this in s tan ce
two s lides are in
us e;
while on e load of tobacco is
bein g s trun g ,
the other s lide is s en t
to the field for an other load.
[5
n eg atives ]
3. "ST RINGING T HE T OBACCO." At the
barn ,
the tobacco is
s trun g
on s ticks
by
the women an d
children ,
an d thos e men who are n ot
required
in the field. T he
s ticks are of
pin e,
four feet
lon g .
T he
s trin g
is fas ten ed at on e
en d,
an d the leaves
of tobacco in bun ches of three or
four,
are
s trun g
on the s tick
altern ately
on each
s ide. Note the n otched "hors es " for
holdin g
the s ticks while
s trin g in g .
When a s tick
is filled with
tobacco,
it is removed from the hors e an d
piled
in fron t of the
barn ,
where it remain s un til
put up
in the barn . Sometimes s helters are
provided
to
keep
the s un from the tobacco, after it is
s trun g ,
s in ce
very
hot s un will burn the tobacco.
In this cas e two
people
are
s trin g in g ,
on e of them an
expert n eg ro boy,
an d two or
three
people
are
"han din g
the
primin g s "
to the
s trin g er. [12 n eg atives ]
4. "PUT T ING IN T HE T OBACCO." At n oon , after the las t s lide of the
morn in g
has come from the field, the tobacco which has been
s trun g
is
hun g
from the barn .
T he barn s are of four or five "rooms " (a
room is the
s pace
between the tier
poles ;
the
barn in the
picture
is a four room barn , an d will hold about 600 s ticks of tobacco).
T wo men
g o up
on the tier
poles ,
an d the tobacco is han ded
up
to them. On e room
T he
Photog rapher
as
717
is filled at a time. In the barn
picture,
s everal
people's
tobacco is
bein g put
in to-
g ether;
there
are,
in addition to the s econ d
primin g s
men tion ed,
s ome firs t
primin g s
from an other field.
T hes e
are much in ferior in
quality
to the s econ d
primin g s ,
an d
are covered with s an d--hen ce the term "s an d leaves ."
[7 n eg atives ]
5. "FIRING T HE BARNS." When the barn is
filled,
the tobacco is allowed to
han g
for s everal
hours ,
s ometimes over
n ig ht,
un til the leaves are
thoroug hly
wilted.
Fires are then built in the
furn aces ,
an d the
proces s
of
curin g beg in s .
T he heat is
kept
at
n in ety deg rees
un til the tobacco is
"yellowed"
then is
g radually
rais ed un til
all of the leaf
except
the s tem is
cured,
when the fin al
s tag e, "killin g
out,"
is reached.
T -he
heat is
us ually
rais ed
rapidly
un til it reaches 190 or 200
deg rees . Curin g
takes
about three
days
an d three
n ig hts , althoug h
un der certain circums tan ces it
may
take
lon g er.
After the tobacco is
cured,
it is allowed to
han g
in the
curin g
barn un til
it "comes in order"-abs orbs
en oug h
mois ture s o that it can be han dled without
breakin g -when
it is taken down an d
packed
in the
pack
hous e. Here it remain s
un til it is
s tripped
out. It is
us ually
taken
up
an d
repacked
on ce,
s o that it will n ot
become
exces s ively
mois t an d mould.
[5
n eg atives ]45
T hes e s hort
es s ays s oug ht
to defetis hize
ag ricultural
commodities ,
revealin g
them as
products
of human
labor,
but
they
were n ever
publis hed.
Everywhere
in the South
L an g e
tried to illus trate
as pects
of the racial
s ys tem,
n ot
on ly
the
s eg reg ation ,
labor market
dis crimin ation ,
an d dual
wag e
s cale,
but als o the in -
terracial in timacies characteris tic of the
Jim
Crow
s ys tem:
"T he three
year
old white
g irl
at in tervals
s lapped
an d s witched the little
Neg ro g irl
about her
ag e
an d on ce called her a
damn
fool;
but between thes e outburs ts the children
played tog ether peaceably."
She lis -
ten ed to white
croppers complain in g
about the blacks an d to blacks
tellin g
her how
they
man ag ed
the whites : "We kn ow our white folks an d
jus t
what to
s ay
to
pleas e
them."46
When
L an g e
firs t en tered the South s he was s truck
by
its lack of forward motion . As
her s on Dan iel Dixon s ummarized:
Up
un til
then ,
mos t of her work had been don e in areas where
Depres s ion
had
s haken
apart an y
form of s ocial order. But in the
South,
a s ocial order
remain ed,
an d it held s o
ten acious ly
to thos e who lived un der it that in order to
photog raph
the
people
s he dis covered that s he had to
photog raph
the order as well.
"I
couldn 't
pry
the two
apart ....
Earlier,
I'd
g otten
at
people throug h
the
ways they'd
been torn
loos e,
but n ow I had to
g et
at them
throug h
the
ways they
were boun d
up."47
But s oon s he came to s ee
dis ruption
here,
too. She documen ted the eviction of
croppers
an d their tran s formation in to
day
laborers ,
vis ible in the men
waitin g
on urban s treet
corn ers for work an d in the truckloads of workers
bein g
ferried to an d from dis tan t fields .
Florida in
particular beg an
to look like Californ ia. Southern
g rowers
who were n ow
rely-
in g
on
wag e
labor
quickly adopted
the Californ ia
plan
of
recruitin g
more workers than
they
n eeded in order to be as s ured of reliable
cheap
labor.48
Moreover,
the
Ag ricultural
Adjus tmen t
Act was
s peedin g up
thos e ten den cies : more an d more s outhern farmlan d
45
Dorothea
L an g e,
"Gen eral
Caption
#6,"
July
7, 1939,
Shoofly,
Gran ville
Coun ty,
N.C.,
file 3167B, Southern
His torical Collection
(Un ivers ity
of North Carolin a
L ibrary, Chapel
Hill).
46
Dorothea
L an g e,
"Gen eral
Caption
#7," ibid.
Caption
to
Dorothea
L an g e, "Neg ro
on the
Aldridg e
Plan ta-
tion ,
Mis s is s ippi," photog raph, Jun e 1937, L C-USF347-017137-C, FSA-OWI Collection .
47
Dan iel Dixon
quoted
in L evin an d
Northrup,
Dorothea
L an g e,
I, 39.
48
For an
example
of
over-recruitin g
in the Southeas t,
s ee T errell Clin e
(FSA,
Belle Glade, Fla.)
to
John
Beecher
(FSA,
Birmin g ham,
Ala.),
May
14, 1939,
copy,
Mis cellan eous
Material, vol. 1,
L an g e
Archive.
718 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
came in to the han ds of abs en tee
corporation s ; plan tation s
were
expan din g
in
s ize;
an d
larg e efficien cy-min ded
own ers
broug ht
in tractors an d
wag e
laborers to
replace
mules
an d
ten an ts .49
L an g e
an d
T aylor
wan ted their
join t
work to educate American s about
ag ricultural
labor,
but
they operated
within con s train ts . Some
they
res is ted
s ucces s fully,
s ome un -
s ucces s fully,
an d to s ome
they capitulated.
T he FSA
photog raphers ,
for
example,
were as -
s ig n ed "s hootin g s cripts " by Stryker,
an d while he was
always
clear that the
photog raphers
s hould
improvis e
an d
photog raph opportun is tically, they
n evertheles s tried to
comply
with his
reques ts ,
s uch as this on e:
I.
Production of foods
...
a.
Packag in g
an d
proces s in g
... b.
Pickin g , haulin g ,
s ortin g , preparin g , dryin g , can n in g , packag in g , loadin g
for
s hippin g
c. Field
opera-
tion s -plan tin g ;
cultivation ;
s prayin g
d. Dramatic
pictures
of
fields ,
s how
"pattern "
of the
coun try; g et feelin g
of the
productive
earth,
boun dles s acres . e. Warehous es
filled with
food,
raw an d
proces s ed,
can s , boxes ,
bag s ,
etc.50
By
the late 1930s
political
attacks on the FSA forced
Stryker
to as k his
photog raphers
to
quit focus in g
on
poor people
an d the
depres s ion
an d in s tead
g et "pictures
of
men ,
women an d children who
appear
as if
they really
believed in the U.S. . . . T oo
man y
in our file n ow
pain t
the U.S. as an old
pers on 's
home . ..
everyon e
is too old to work
an d too maln ouris hed to care . . . We
particularly
n eed . . . More
con ten ted-lookin g
couples -woman s ewin g ,
man
readin g ; s ittin g
on
porch; workin g
in
g arden ." By
that
time war
threaten ed,
an d
Stryker
felt that Adolf Hitler was "at our
doors tep."51
Mos t
of
the
photog raphers , in cludin g L an g e, complied.
L an g e
an d
T aylor
als o wan ted their vis ual an d textual "res earch
fin din g s "
to tell a s to-
ry-that
is ,
to commun icate his torical
chan g e. Ultimately, they join tly produced
a
book,
American Exodus
(1940),
for which
T aylor
wrote a
caps ule his tory
of the three modes of
ag riculture
that
L an g e
had
photog raphed. Pres en tin g
a his torical
an alys is throug h
s till
photog raphs
alon e was n ot
eas y.
If
L an g e
had had her
way,
the FSA would have dis tributed
n ot
s in g le photog raphs
but
photo es s ays ,
to s how
in s tability
an d tran s formation . But the
FSA had a far more in s trumen tal
g oal
in
dis tributin g photog raphs -developin g popular
s upport
for its
prog rams -an d
a n arrower an d s hallower
un ders tan din g
of what
photo-
g raphs
s hould commun icate.52
Attemptin g
to con trol the
mean in g s
of her
pictures , L an g e
wrote
lon g ,
in formative
caption s
for the
photog raphs .
She s aid that s he learn ed this from
T aylor,
who n ot
on ly
collected data from his
s ubjects
but als o in terviewed them an d wrote down what
they
s aid. She
rejected
the
picture-is -worth-a-thous an d-words
idea an d believed in s tead that
documen tary photog raphs us ually
remain ed
ambig uous
if n ot
accompan ied by
words .
She wan ted to
fix
the
mean in g s
of
photog raphs . Stryker
un ders tood his
project
as col-
lectin g photog raphic
eviden ce,
s o even before he s aw
L an g e's
work he had
already
as ked
4
For
example,
life in s uran ce
compan ies
an d ban ks own ed 30% of s outhern cotton lan d in
1934;
in the cotton
belt, 60-70% of lan d was n ot own ed
by
farm
operators .
Dan iel,
Breakin g
the
L an d, 168-77.
50
Stryker's "s cript" quoted
in T homas H.
Garver, ed., Jus t before
the War: Urban America fom 1935 to 1941 as
Seen
by Photog raphers of
the
Farm
Security
Admin is tration
(New York, 1968),
n .p.
51
E Roy Stryker,
In T his Proud L an d: America 1935-1943 as Seen in the
FSA Photog raphs
(Green wich, 1973),
188.
52
L an g e
an d
T aylor,
American Exodus . T he
FSA
claimed that its dis tribution
apparatus
was effective. In the firs t
s ix mon ths of
1936,
the
s till-fledg lin g ag en cy
coun ted
1,255
pictures publis hed
in
n ews papers ,
541 in
mag azin es ,
an d 1,202
in exhibits . In ter-office
memo, Jun e 16, 1936,
FSA
microfilm,
L ibrary
of
Con g res s .
T he
Photog rapher
as
719
his
photog raphers
to
provide
detailed
iden tification s -who, when ,
where-with each
picture.
Soon
L an g e
became his mas ter
caption er,
an d he
taug ht
his other
photog ra-
phers by us in g
hers as models .
Althoug h
her
caption s
were n ot
us ually
as
len g thy
as the
on e
prin ted
above-that was what s he called a
"g en eral caption ,"
attached to a
g roup
of
photog raphs -they typically provided
brief life his tories of her
s ubjects
an d/or econ omic
data about their
chan g in g experien ces
of
lan down ers hip, earn in g s ,
an d s tan dard of liv-
in g .
She was
attemptin g
to con n ect
pers on al experien ce
with vas t his torical
proces s es ,
to
create
photog raphic
microhis tories . She did n ot wan t her
photog raphs
to become
icon ic;
s he mean t them as documen ts about
s pecific
s ocial, econ omic,
an d
political
con texts . Her
us e of
caption s ,
both to delimit an d to
expan d
the
mean in g
of her
photog raphs , parallels
her labor to con trol the
imag es
thems elves ,
n ot
on ly by croppin g
an d
framin g ,
as all
pho-
tog raphers
do,
but als o
by as kin g s ubjects
to
move,
coaxin g
them to an imation
throug h
con vers ation ,
an d
in corporatin g
detail to commun icate s ocial con text.
But the
photog raphs
were
us ually publis hed
without
caption s .
Sometimes the FSA s taff
edited an d bowdlerized her words . In this
caption ,
for
example,
on e
phras e
was s truck
out
by
the FSA: "Old
Neg ro-the
kin d the
plan ter
like. He
hoes ,
picks
cotton ,
an d is full
of
g ood
humor."53
She hated the
way
her
photog raph
kn own as
"Mig ran t
Mother" was
removed from its con text an d turn ed in to a un ivers al
imag e
of motherhood. Her fa-
mous
plan tation -own er picture provides
a vivid
example
of this
ambig uity
an d deracin a-
tion : Her
photog raph's
vis ual s tructure
replicates
the s ocial-econ omic s tructure-the rela-
tion s of
power
an d deferen ce on a s outhern
plan tation .
But Archibald MacL eis h took
it,
cropped
it,
an d us ed it in his book L an d
of
the Free
(1938), turn in g
the white man in to a
s ymbol
of s alt-of-the-earth
pion eer American is m.54
(See
fig ures
7 an d
8.)
Even before s he
join ed
the
FSA,
L an g e's photog raphic
method was con ducive to
rep-
res en tin g
his torical
chan g e
on the microhis torical level. T o illus trate with a
comparis on :
Walker Evan s would lin e
up
his
s ubjects
an d hold them
s till,
as in an old-fas hion ed
por-
trait
s tudio;
his
s ubjects appear
timeles s ,
often
in ten s e,
but
rarely
active. His
man y
clos e-
ups
of vern acular architecture in ten s ified the
s tability
of his oeuvre.
L an g e
wan ted her
s ubjects
in motion .
Iron ically,
her method in the field derived
precis ely
from her
lon g
experien ce
as a
portrait photog rapher
to the elite an d
hig h-cultured.
She
employed
two
approaches :
either s he con vers ed with her
s ubjects
un til
they
fell in to their n atural
pos -
ture an d
g es ture,
or s he took s o
lon g
to s et
up
her
equipmen t
that
they forg ot
her an d
return ed to what
they
had been
doin g .
She could
n ot,
of
cours e,
actually capture
move-
men t becaus e her film was n ot fas t
en oug h,
but s he could
capture
the
eloquen ce
of
bodily
expres s ion .
She in dividuated
s ubjects
as much
throug h
bodies as faces .
Des pite
the
heavy,
repetitious
movemen ts of field
labor,
her
s ubjects
often s eemed
un s ettled, un certain ,
dis -
rupted,
deracin ated,
an d this was
exactly
what s he wan ted to commun icate about the
ag -
ricultural
political econ omy.
Some of the FSA's mos t s ucces s ful
photog raphs , judg in g
from their
s tayin g power,
re-
s ulted from
photog raphers ' s trayin g
from in s truction s -thos e
reg ardin g g en der,
for ex-
ample. Althoug h
almos t
every
New Deal
policy
res ted on
family wag e as s umption s -that
men s hould be able to
s upport
wives an d children
s in g le-han dedly,
an d that wives s hould
"
I
have
compared
the
orig in al caption
in
L an g e's
own han d to the
caption
attached to the
photog raph
in the L i-
brary
of
Con g res s ;
Dorothea
L an g e,
"Old
Neg ro,
He
Hoes ,
Picks Cotton an d Is Full of Good
Humor," Jun e
1939,
photog raph,
L C-USF34-017079-C, FSA-OWI
Collection . Her han dwritten
caption s
are in
L an g e
Archive.
5
Archibald MacL eis h, L an d
of
the Free
(New York, 1938),
7.
720 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
Fig ure
7. "Plan tation own er.
Mis s is s ippi
Delta,
n ear
Clarks dale,
Mis s is s ippi." Jun e
1936.
Photo
by
Dorothea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/
owi
Collection , L C-USF34-T O-009599-C DL C.
Fig ure
8,
on the
facin g pag e,
s hows the
s ame
imag e
as
cropped by
Archibald MacL eis h.
Reprin tedfrom
Archibald MacL eis h, L an d
of the Free
(New York, 1938),
7
n ot be
employed-an d
aimed to
s tren g then
the male breadwin n er
family.
T he us ual
Pop-
ular Fron t artis tic icon s
s tereotyped
women as
helpmates
an d earth mothers .
L an g e, alon g
with the later FSA
photog rapher
Es ther
Bubley,
vis ualized women as
in depen den t,
to the
deg ree
that her work could be con s idered
proto-femin is t. Ag ain
the rural
s ubject
matter
was
partly res pon s ible,
becaus e a s exual divis ion of labor was les s fixed
amon g
farm-work-
in g people. L an g e's
work s hows women at hard labor almos t as often as men . Her
depres -
s ion women were
s harply
etched-often
thin ,
often
delicate,
always toug h.
She did love
matern al
imag es ,
but s he often
pres en ted
fatherles s mother-child
un its ,
decen terin g
the
marital
couple
as
family
core. T he
photog raphy
critic
Sally
Stein has
poin ted
out how
often
L an g e's
work als o focus ed on fathers with
children ,
an other common
as pect
of ru-
ral
life,
thoug h rarely
n oticed. Soften ed
imag es
of men characterized her work
g en erally,
as if s he were
fin din g
the
pos itive
s ide of male
helples s n es s
an d
dis empowermen t. L an g e
ros e to the
challen g e
of
pres en tin g
idle,
un employed
men as worried an d
des pon den t, yet
man ly
n on etheles s ."
55 By
far,
the mos t
importan t
an d
compellin g an alys is reg ardin g L an g e's
focus on bodies is
Sally
Stein , "Peculiar
Grace: Dorothea
L an g e
an d the
T es timon y
of the
Body,"
in Dorothea
L an g e:
A Vis ual
L ife,
ed. Elizabeth
Partridg e
(Was hin g ton ,
1994), 57-89. On
g en dered
New Deal
policy as s umption s
an d
Popular
Fron t
s tereotypes ,
s ee Me-
T he
Photog rapher
as
721
L an g e's oppos ition
to
racis m,
by
con tras t,
was more than
"proto."
It was
con s cious ,
con s idered,
an d con s is ten t. She made more
pictures
of
people
of color-31
percen t
of
her total
output-than
did
an y
other FSA
photog rapher
un til Gordon Parks
join ed
the
g roup.56
An d FSA
photog raphers produced
more
imag es
of
people
of color than New Deal
arts workers in
g en eral.
Here too
L an g e's pers pective g rew
from her
ag ricultural as s ig n -
men t an d its location : had s he been
focus in g
on in dus trial workers an d the urban
poor,
or
had s he been
workin g
in the
Eas t,
s he would have n ot have s een racial
divers ity
as s he did.
L an g e
was the firs t
An g lo photog rapher
to in clude
people
of
Mexican ,
Filipin o, Japan es e,
an d Chin es e
orig in
in her
portrait
ofAmerica.
L an g e
an d
T aylor's
firs t 1935
report
on the
n eed for federal
camps
for farm workers
depicted
thos e who n eeded an d des erved
g overn -
men t action as
people
of color: thirteen
photog raphs
featured Mexican s or other
people
of
color,
s even featured
people
who could
pos s ibly
be
white.57
(All
the
people
were
attractive.)
L an g e's
field n otes from 1935
frequen tly
feature con vers ation s with Mexican workers . She
los h,
En g en derin g
Culture. For a work that examin es a s imilar artis tic
challen g e-con s tructin g
war memorials that
n either
g lorify
war n or dis hon or thos e who
foug ht-s ee, Georg e
L .
Mos s e,
Fallen Soldiers :
Res hapin g
the
Memory of
the World Wars
(New York, 1990).
56
Nicholas Natan s on , T he Black
Imag e
in the New Deal: T he Politics
ofFs A Photog raphy
(Kn oxville, 1992), 61-62,
72. Gordon Parks was n ot
orig in ally
hired
by
the
ag en cy:
he us ed a Ros en wald Foun dation
fellows hip
to s erve as
an in tern un der
Stryker. Stryker's s hop
was
by
n o mean s free of racis m:
Stryker
had been reluctan t to
brin g
in Parks
even as an
in tern ,
an d
FSA
darkroom workers did n ot wan t to
proces s
film for him.
57 My categ orization
of the
people
in thes e
photog raphs
is bas ed on
appearan ce,
when it
provides
clear iden tifi-
cation ,
but als o on
clothin g
an d the
types
of s hacks built
by
the workers -for
example,
Mexican s often built huts of
cactus , bran ches ,
an d
palms .
State
Emerg en cy
Relief Admin is tration
report,
March 1935,
T aylor Papers .
722 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
Fig ure
9. "Cotton worker in
Sun day
clothes . Near
Blytheville,
Arkan s as ."
Jun e
1937. Photo
by
Dorothea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI
Collection , L C-USF34-017363-C.
n oted with relis h that on e old
picker
had
foug ht ag ain s t Emperor
Maximilian . Even when
her n otes do n ot in dicate
ethn icity,
it is often clear that s he is
in terviewin g
an d
photo-
g raphin g
Mexican s : In
Calexico, Californ ia,
at the Mexican
border,
s he was
told,
"'I don '
like
you
make the
picture
becaus e we have s hame thees
hous e."'
"T hes e are the
forg otten
men ,
women an d children of rural Californ ia but on thes e
people
the
crops
of Californ ia
depen d,"
s he an d
T aylor wrote.58
In the South s he made dozen s of
compellin g , clos e-up
portraits
of African
American s ,
portraits
that exhibit three
qualities
that
L an g e always
loved in her
s ubjects - bodily g race, con templative
demean or,
an d s ocial con n ectedn es s .
Her
photog raphs
drew farm workers of color in to
citizen s hip,
an effect that res ted in
part
on
lin g erin g
as s ociation s of
citizen s hip
with the lan d. She
photog raphed
African
American s with the s ame vis ual
tropes
s he us ed with
whites ,
repres en tin g
them as
equally
hardy
s alt-of-the-earth
farmers -part
of the American
yeoman ry.59
Her
s ubjects dis played
citizen ly competen ce
an d
dig n ity.
Her focus on
citizen s hip
fit a much-criticized FSA
policy
of
payin g poll
taxes for the s outhern
poor;
as the FSA director C. B. Baldwin
explain ed,
"we took the
pos ition
that a
pers on
couldn 't be a
g ood
citizen without
bein g
a
voter."'6
58
Dorothea
L an g e's
field
n otes , n .d.,
L an g e
Archive.
59
Charles Alan
Watkin s ,
"T he Blurred
Imag e: Documen tary Photog raphy
an d the
Depres s ion
South" (Ph.D.
dis s .,
Un ivers ity
of
Delaware, 1982),
323.
60
Baldwin in terview.
T he
Photog rapher
as
723
Fig ure
10. "Member of the Delta
cooperative
farm at
Hillhous e,
Mis s is s ippi." Jun e
1937. Photo
by
Dorothea
Prin ts an d
Photog raphs
Divis ion , FSA/OWI Collection , L C-USF34-017299-C.
Her
s ubjects
are
thoug htful,
deliberative,
even cerebral. She
g ives
them
g ravitas by lig ht-
in g
them
well,
by s hootin g
from
below,
by waitin g
for their
thoug htful
momen ts . An d
s he us ed verbal eviden ce when s he could. She
copied
in to her n otebook the words of a
female farm
worker,
"'I wan t to
g o
back to Mexico but
my
children
s ay,
No we all born
here we
belon g
in this
coun try.
We don 't
g o."'
She
caption ed
on e
lovely portrait
of father
an d
baby,
"Future voter & his Mexican
father."''
With
res pect
to
race,
the FSA hobbled
L an g e
more than in
an y
other dimen s ion . Its in -
s truction was clear: n o violation of s outhern racial codes . No
photog raphs
of blacks an d
whites in s ocial
con tact,
n o referen ces to racial
oppres s ion ,
n o
imag es
of racial
in equality
or abus e of blacks . T he s exual divis ion of labor in which women could be full-time hous e-
wives was res erved for whites . Heroic workers had to be
white,
which was to
s ay, "typi-
cal American s ."
L an g e
an d the other female FSA
photog rapher
who worked in the rural
South,
Marion Pos t
Wolcott,
faced a further obs tacle to
illus tratin g
the s outhern
s ys tem
hon es tly:
that
an y
dis cus s ion with or even
proximity
to a white woman created an acute
dan g er
for a black man .62
Mos t of the FSA
photog raphers , L an g e
in cluded,
violated FSA racial s trictures at times .
In urban s cen es
they
s howed "whites
on ly" s ig n s
or African American s
g ivin g way
to
61
Quotation from
caption
to
photog raph
RA
825B,
L an g e
Archive.
62
E Jack Hurley, Marion Pos t Wolcott: A
Photog raphic Journ ey (Albuquerque,
1989).
724 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
whites on the s idewalk. T he s idewalk s cen es s kirted clos e to the taboo
ag ain s t s howin g
blacks an d whites
tog ether. L an g e
als o violated that
prohibition by s howin g
the racial
in timacy
that con s tituted the revers e face of the s outhern racial
s ys tem.
She could
n ot,
of
cours e,
capture
the
man y
in terracial s exual
relation s hips ,
both free an d
coerced,
that
flouris hed in the South. But s he s howed children
playin g
an d
bon din g
acros s racial
lin es ,
white an d black farm workers
relaxin g
at
s tores , an d,
above
all,
s he
emphas ized
the s imi-
larities
amon g
black an d white
s harecroppers .
But the
photog raphers ' very
des ire to re-
s pect
African American s led
them-L an g e
in cluded-to
repres en t
white an d black ten -
an ts '
livin g
an d
workin g
con dition s as
iden tical,
which was n ot the cas e. T his
practice
exemplifies
how
equal
treatmen t of
un equals reproduces in equality.
It
matched,
for ex-
ample,
the
FSAs
loan
policy,
in which blacks had to meet the s ame
requiremen ts
as
whites ,
even
thoug h
the
Jim
Crow
econ omy
made blacks
poorer.
Emphas izin g
white-black
common ality
was a
deliberate,
s ys tematic
refrain for the FSA.
Yet for
L an g e
an d
T aylor, avoidin g
a focus on racis m was n ot
en tirely
an
extern ally
im-
pos ed
s tricture,
becaus e in
man y ways
it fit their
an alys is
of the South. T o recen t his tori-
an s
an y con ception
of the
pre-civil rig hts
South,
its main feature
appears
as racis m. But
of the
1930s ,
even to an tiracis ts s uch as
L an g e
an d
T aylor,
other
as pects
of the s outhern
political econ omy
s eemed at leas t
equally
fun damen tal.
Prog res s ives
in the
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture,
s everal of whom were
s outhern ers ,
s aw the
problem
of farm
ten an cy
as
fun damen tal to all
as pects
of the South: econ omic
backwardn es s ,
cultural
backwardn es s ,
un democratic
g overn men t,
as well as racis m. An d mos t
Departmen t
of
Ag riculture peo-
ple
were far more con cern ed with white
s harecroppers
than with black. In
1935
n early
half of all U.S. farmers were
lan dles s .63 T he
an alys is
that econ omic
exploitation un derlay
racis m reflected n ot
on ly
the
ag riculture experts ' primary
con cern with lan d
ten ure,
but
more
broadly,
a
ten den cy
toward den ial of n orthern racis m that characterized n orthern
liberals . At a time when 75
percen t
of African American s lived in the s outheas tern
s tates ,
it was eas ier than it is
today
to s ee racis m as a s outhern
problem.
T he Eas t Coas t-cen tered
approach
of mos t
ag ricultural policy
makers rein forced that illus ion becaus e it hid wes t-
ern
g rowers ' equal depen den ce
on workers of color.
T hen too,
L an g e's photog raphs
of
people
of color were far les s often dis tributed than
thos e of whites . T he
FSA's
firs t
An n ual
Report,
for
1935-1936,
a
g los s y 173-pag e
book
with
approximately fifty photog raphs ,
con tain ed n ot on e of a
pers on
of color. T he his to-
rian Nicholas
Natan s on ,
who s tudied race in New Deal
imag ery,
has
provided
exten s ive
eviden ce an d
an alys is
of that
exclus ion ary policy.
FSA
imag es
did n ot in clude chain
g an g s ,
child
labor,
in ferior black
public
facilities s uch as s chools or health care in s titution s . T he
firs t FSA
travelin g
exhibit omitted all
imag es
of blacks
except
for on e
L an g e portrait
s an i-
tized of its con text an d
caption ,
an d even that
broug ht objection
from the
T exas
FSA Of-
fice:
"'even
a
Span is h-American
farmer's
picture
would n ot be
popular
in Wes t T exas ."' A
mural
in New
York
City's
Gran d Cen tral T ermin al
put tog ether by
the
FSA'S
Ed Ros s kam
out of
twen ty
FSA
photog raphs
s howed n ot on e black face,
althoug h
it was moun ted
by
a black as s is tan t.64 Even when Floren ce L oeb
Kellog g
of
Survey Graphic s pecifically
as ked
the FSA for
photog raphs s howin g
racial
divers ity,
s he did n ot
g et
them. So n ervous was the
FSA in its later
years
that
Stryker
wen t to
g reat
effort to hide the fact that Richard
Wrig ht
63 On the n umber of lan dles s farmers in
1935,
s ee Gilbert an d
Brown , "Altern ative L an d Reform
Propos als
in
the
1930s ," 355.
64
Natan s on , Black
Imag e
in the New
Deal,
215-23,
es p.
220.
T he
Photog rapher
as
725
us ed FSA
photog raphs
to illus trate his 12 Million Black Voices
(even
thoug h
it was Ros s -
kam who
orig in ated
the
project
an d recruited
Wrig ht
for it in
1941).65
L an g e
made n o recorded
protes t ag ain s t
the
s trateg y
of
valorizin g
the
poor by
dis trib-
utin g primarily pictures
of
whites ,
an d I would
g ues s
that s he
accepted
it,
as did s o
man y
New Deal
prog res s ives , in cludin g
Will
Alexan der,
the head of the FSA an d a veteran leader
of the s outhern in terracial movemen t. It
probably
s eemed to her
parallel
to the
s trateg y
of
valorizin g
the
poor by makin g
them han ds ome.
Stryker, L an g e,
an d
T aylor
believed that
the FSA s urvived
on ly throug h
racial
compromis es ,
which were n ot limited to the South-
eas t. Not
on ly
were the FSA
camps
for
mig ran t
farm workers -the firs t federal
public
hous in g -s eg reg ated;
often there were n o
camps
at all for
people
of color. On e his torian
s ug g es ted
that the FSA con cen trated on blon d-haired children .
Yet,
Nicholas
Natan s on ,
s tron g ly
critical of vis ual
imag es
of blacks in the New
Deal,
calculated that the FSA did
better than
an y
other
g overn men t
arts
prog ram
in
providin g pos itive imag es
of blacks .
In the FSA'S whole
photog raphic
collection ,
blacks con s tituted 10
percen t
of
s ubjects -al-
thoug h
a much lower
percen tag e
of what the FSA
dis tributed.66
But even
bracketin g
the extern al
con s train ts ,
L an g e's attempt
to create n ot
on ly
in -
clus ive,
but
s pecifically
an ti-racis t
photog raphy
was les s s ucces s ful. She
con s is ten tly
tried
to us e vis ual
relation s hips
to s how s ocial an d econ omic on es . She made a few
pictures
of "bad
g uys ":
the
plan tation
own er,
the crude s outhern
overs eer,
the Californ ia s heriffs
thug .
But
they
were
mos tly ag en ts ,
n ot
authors ,
of racis m-or of clas s
relation s ,
for that
matter-as a s tructure. In her
photog raphs
s he was
rarely
able to make
s patial
relation s
metaphoric
of
power
relation s ,
an d when s he did
they
were n ot readable as s uch without
caption s .
I have as ked
man y people
to
in terpret
the
photog raph reproduced
here as
fig -
ure
11,
but n o on e catches its
s ubject-a
farmer
vain ly tryin g
to
pers uade Departmen t
of
Ag riculture ag en ts
to
g ran t
a loan . She
tried,
as
always ,
to add text to
s pecify
what s he
mean t. She often
quoted
her
s ubjects
about
racis m,
but their commen ts were n ever
pub-
lis hed with her
photog raphs .
For
example,
"Hours are
n othin g
to us . You can 't in dus trial-
ize
farmin g .
We in
Mis s is s ippi
kn ow how to treat our
n ig g ers ."''67
L an g e
made s everal
attempts
to
photog raph org an ized protes t-the
San Fran cis co
lon g s hore
an d
g en eral
s trike of
1934,
the 1938 lettuce workers '
s trike,
even s ecret meet-
in g s
of the Southern T en an t Farmers ' Un ion . Some of thes e efforts
yielded
fin e
photo-
g raphs ,
but n on e that delivered the feel of collective res is tan ce.
Durin g
the 1930s Cali-
forn ia
experien ced epis odes
of the mos t in ten s e clas s con flict in U.S.
his tory,
often called
war in the fields . Californ ia's
big g rowers
us ed
every
available mean s of
law, violen ce,
an d
in timidation to
preven t
farm-worker un ion ization .
L an g e's portraits
of in dividual leaders
an d militan ts in thes e
s trug g les ,
s uch as T om
Moon ey
an d H. L . Mitchell of the South-
ern T en an t Farmers '
Un ion ,
are
vibran tly s ympathetic.
But,
on the
whole,
thes e
photo-
g raphs
are
amon g
her weakes t. No doubt it was difficult to
g et
clos e to the action .68
Sym-
65 On Floren ce L oeb
Kellog g 's reques t,
s ee Cara A.
Fin n eg an , Picturin g Poverty:
Prin t Culture an d
FSA
Photog raphs
(Was hin g ton ,
2003),
74. On
Stryker
an d Richard
Wrig ht's
us e
of FSA
photog raphs ,
s ee Clara
Wakeham
to
Jack
Delan o,
April
3, 1941
(microfilm:
reel
1), Roy Stryker Papers
(microfilm
copy
in
L ibrary
of
Con g res s , Was hin g ton ,
D.C.).
Richard
Wrig ht,
12 Million Black Voices : A Folk
His tory of
the
Neg ro
in the Un ited States
(New York, 1941).
66
L an dis , "Fate, Res pon s ibility,
an d 'Natural' Dis as ter
Relief," 307; Natan s on , 66-67.
67 Dorothea L an g e, "A T ractor Pion eer of the
Mis s is s ippi Delta," Jun e 1937,
photog raph,
L C-USF347-017138-
C, FSA-OWI Collection .
68
In
fairn es s ,
I would add that mos t
photog raphers
did n ot even
attempt photog raphs
of
org an ized protes t. Sally
Stein ,
"Startin g
from Pictorialis m: Notable Con tin uities in the Modern ization of Californ ia
Photog raphy,"
in
Cap-
turin g L ig ht: Mas terpieces of Californ ia Photog raphy,
1850 to the
Pres en t, ed. Drew Heath
John s on (Oaklan d, 2001).
726 T he
Journ al
of American
His tory
December 2006
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: : : : : -: : : : : : : :
Fig ure
11.
"Dairy Coop
Officials ." 1935. Photo
by
Dorothea
L an g e. Courtes y
Oaklan d
Mus eum
of Californ ia,
T he
Dorothea
L an g e
Collection , A6713735132.1.
pathetic photog raphers
s uch as
L an g e may
have s hied
away
from
expos in g
the s trikers '
violen ce or even the
chan tin g
an d
s houtin g
that often ren ders faces as dis torted. Nicho-
las Natan s on wrote
(of
an other
photog rapher),
"an
an g ry
camera becomes a
demean in g
camera.""69
Moreover,
the
Popular
Fron t an d the New Deal
emphas ized un ity,
n ot con -
flict,
albeit for differen t reas on s : the former to create the
larg es t pos s ible
coalition
ag ain s t
Nazis m,
the latter to
g et
its
ag en da throug h Con g res s .
After
1935,
even the Commun is t
party
withdrew its active
s upport
of farm workers .
I
s us pect
that
L an g e
was un comfortable with overt clas s
con flict,
an d
T aylor s tren g th-
en ed that
political tempermen t.
T heir
g oal-g overn men t camps
for
mig ratory
workers -
required s oft-pedalin g
con flicts of in teres t. Con s cious of the
big g rowers ' power
an d fear-
ful of what he s aw as Commun is t
exploitation
of
workers ,
T aylor con s is ten tly arg ued
that
g overn men t camps
would ben efit
everyon e by elimin atin g
"labor s trife." He
s upported
his
arg umen t by quotin g
both s ides :
"Marys ville g rower:
'Give them
g ood places
to
camp
an d
you'll
n ever have a s trike.'
Marys ville
fruit
picker:
'If folks has a decen t
place
to live
an d can
g it
work there won 't be n o reas on to s trike."' T he
camps
would
remedy
"the men -
ace of the
exis tin g
s ituation to
health,
morals an d in dus trial
peace."70
69
Natan s on ,
Black
Imag e
in the New Deal, 26.
70
T aylor, "Operation
of
camps
for
mig ran ts
in Californ ia
ag riculture,"
memo,
Aug .
3, 1935,
box 1, I. W.
Wood
Papers
(Ban croft
L ibrary).
T he
Photog rapher
as
727
L an g e
con demn ed without res ervation the con dition s in which farm workers had to
work an d
live,
but s he was
willin g
to
produce photog raphic
advertis emen ts for FSA
proj-
ects . T here was an aroma of res cue mis s ion in the
way
s he an d
T aylor foug ht
for the
camps .
Still,
that mis s ion was als o a
utopian as piration -to provide
the free
s pace
an d
min imally
decen t
livin g
con dition s that could allow the farm workers to become
citizen s ,
n ot s o much
leg ally
but
civilly;
that
is ,
to become
people
with
rig hts .
Carol Shlos s
arg ues
for that s ide of their vis ion of the
camps :
"in a world where the s tate has become a
private
police
s tate,
the
on ly
freedom is to be foun d in
en clos ure,
in
s pace
that
protects people
from the
vig ilan ce
of thos e who wan t to
frig hten
them in to
quietn es s
an d s ubmis s ion ."
Other
s cholars , however,
have n oted the
con trollin g
as well as the
protectin g as pect
of
thes e
camps .
T he
g eog rapher
Don Mitchell
compares camp"democracy"
to the exercis e
of s tuden t
g overn men t
in
hig h
s chools -the
man ag ers always
retain ed ultimate con trol.
Yet As s ociated
Farmers ,
the
org an ization big g rowers
formed to
s top
farm-worker
org a-
n izin g ,
n ever
s topped tryin g
to force the feds to clos e the
camps .7
T hat
hos tility
can s erve
as a remin der that the war in the fields was n ot
exclus ively
a two-s ided
s trug g le
an d that
s ome in the FSA were
tryin g
to erode the
g rowers ' tyran n y
over
mig ran t
workers . But the
camps
could n ever have don e more than relieve
s ymptoms ;
an d
they
s erved
on ly
a frac-
tion of the farm workers who n eeded them.
T his
es s ay
is a
byproduct
of
my
work on a
biog raphy
of
L an g e.
In
un dertakin g
that
project,
I did n ot
imag in e
that I would have to educate
mys elf
(however
in adequately)
about
depres s ion -era ag riculture.
It is
L an g e's
work that forced thos e les s on s
upon
me.
She
foug ht
for her en tire
documen tary
career to
preven t
her
photog raphs
from
becomin g
decon textualized an d un ivers alized. She was
con tin ually
in furiated that her bos s would
n ot allow her to retain her own
n eg atives
an d
s upply photog raphs directly
to
publica-
tion s ,
s o as to
g roup
an d
caption
them in an
attempt
to con trol their
mean in g .
Becaus e of
that
frus tration ,
s he tried in her later
years
to con cen trate on
photo es s ays ,
with which s he
could tell a
s tory.
But s he could n ot
g et
mos t of them
publis hed,
s o her work con tin ues to
leak out
today
almos t
exclus ively
as
s in g le, caption les s photog raphs .
In October 2005 her
photog raph
of men at a
s oup
kitchen s old at auction for
$822,400,
at that time the s ec-
on d-hig hes t price
ever
paid
for a
photog raph.72 L an g e
would have
en joyed
the
mon ey
(s he
earn ed
very
little in her
lifetime)
an d the fame
(s he
was
un derrecog n ized
in her
lifetime),
but s he would
certain ly
have
ques tion ed
what it mean t that a
photog raph
of
hun g ry
men
had become a
luxury commodity.
71 Carol Shlos s , In Vis ible
L ig ht: Photog raphy
an d the American Writer, 1840-1940
(New York, 1987),
224. Don
Mitchell,
T he L ie
of
the
L an d:
Mig ran t
Workers an d the
Californ ia L an ds cape (Min n eapolis ,
1996),
186.
John
Stein -
beck des cribed As s ociated Farmers thus : "As s ociated
Farmers ,
which
pres umes
to
s peak
for the farms of Californ ia
an d which is made
up
of s uch earth-s tain ed toilers as chain
ban ks ,
public
utilities ,
railroad
compan ies
an d thos e
hug e corporation s
called lan d
compan ies ." John Stein beck,
"Starvation un der the
Oran g e
T rees ,"
Mon terey
T rader,
April
15, 1938.
72
"Art
Market Watch,"
artn etMag azin e,
Oct. 14, 2005,
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The Photographer As Agricultural Sociologist

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The Photographer As Agricultural Sociologist

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Dorothea Lange: The Photographer as Agricultural Sociologist

Author(s): Linda Gordon

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