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8 a.m. Migratory field workers pulling carrots in a field. Note carrot digging tractor in background. "They'll sleep in the row (to hold a place in the field) to earn sixty cents a day." Near Meloland, Imperial County, California, February 1939
Contra Costa County, California. Bringing cattle in from the range.
Common sight on California highways, November 1938
El Monte federal subsistence homesteads. Four-bedroom house. Eight in family, six boys, aged one to fourteen. Father is streetcar conductor, one hundred dollars monthly. February 1936
El Monte federal subsistence homesteads. One hundred homes, all occupied, each with three quarters of an acre land. Average family income, eight hundred dollars per annum. February 1936
Family of four to be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration. "They won't go until they get so hungry that there's nothing else for them to do. They won't go--not twenty-five percent will go" said a
transient case worker in Imperial County. This family was hungry. They
lost a two-year-old baby as the result of exposure during the winter.
Holtville, California.
March 1937
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Farm Security Administration (FSA) migratory labor camp. Brawley, California. Father is home after a day in the pea fields. Note tent platform, standard equipment in FSA camps. February 1939
Gang of migratory carrot pullers in field. Wages, fourteen cents per crate
of forty eight bunches. Imperial Valley, California, February 1939
Japanese agricultural workers packing broccoli near Guadalupe, California, March 1937
I always found Lange's photos haunting and emotional--mostly despair in this set. In the Family of Four shot, I'm curious why the man was turned away. Was it just the chance moment that he turned as the shutter clicked? Or was it (as the scenarios plays out in my mind) that he couldn't show his face as a man who couldn't provide for his family?
ReplyDeleteFamily of four to be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration link broken.
ReplyDeleteMichael - all of the links you say are broken show up fine for me. Perhaps it's a browser cache problem?
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