L'histoire se répète

The photos being discussed were part of a project called the New Role agenda.  It was started by The Resettlement Administration, later named The Farm Security Administration, which held the objective of raising social consciousness in order to bring attention to and improve the living conditions of farmers, sharecroppers and migrant workers devastatingly hit by the Depression.  Lange was commissioned by the FSA to photograph the plight of the farm workers, which she did capturing images of those being affected by the Depression that hit America in the early 20^th century.  Lange was successful in getting a transparent and raw depiction, through her ‘humanistic documentary genre’ photography (Stones).   Most notably was a photo Lange took called ‘Migrant Mother’. 

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (photo courtesy of http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/migrantmother.htm

The subject of this picture was a widower named Florence Owen Thompson, 28, and a mother of 5 children.  Florence, who was emigrating at the time in order to find work, was spotted by Lange who asked her permission to photograph her in support of the Farm Security Administration. The FSA’s mission was poignant and telling in how documentary photos could influence social conscious and motivate politicians in acts of social justice.  As soon as the photos were published in the newspaper, the Federal Bureau acted on it and immediately delivered food packages to the area where the Migrant Mother photo took place.  However, the Thompson family never received the food packages because they were already in transit by then.

The FSA project had a significant impact on society in many ways, one being that the project documented the plights and suffering of Americans, revealing that battles were not exclusively fought  in offshore destinations, but  that Americans faced their own inner conflict, with lives and a country torn apart  because of droughts which were both economic and environmental.  Two, it began a way of documenting through images agricultural, economic and social history for future generations to look upon and learn from and as a result made it seared in the human conscious so that it would never be forgotten.  In leaving a lasting impression, it now has become eerily identifiable with the current global socio-political and economic atmosphere and gives way to that old adage ‘history repeats itself’(French trans. l'histoire se répète) .