Documenting the great depression

Why the project has significant impact on the society?

The great depression was one of the most memorable historical tragedies through out the 19^th century. During the period, US stock market prices were collapsed, causing money to depreciate. All the stocks became papers with no value, resulting many rich people lost all their assets. It was a world wide economic depression, happening in many countries, USA, Britain, France…etc. With the effects of the great depression, unemployment rate was relative high, industrial production was also decreased in those countries.

According to the website, the black-and white photographs of the Farm Security Administration- Office of War Information Collection are a landmark in the history of documentary photography. This project has a significant impact on the society since the images portray the hard life of the Americans who experienced the effects of the great depression. The project is also a historical prove, documenting the great depression visually. From the photographs, we can all see that people feel depressed from their face expression; worrying about the living, no hope in future. The photographs discipline us form the great depression so we won’t make this kind of mistakes again.

Migrant Mother. Photographer: Dorothea Lang

What was the role of Migrant Mother photograph in the period or the great depression and what is it nowadays?

Migrant Mother. Photographer: Dorothea Lange

“Migrant Mother” is one of the series of photographs and that created by Dorothea Lange. In this photograph, we can see that a depressed mother with her kids around her, sadness and worries are expressed all over her face. Helpless and hopeless are shown from the bottom of her soul, I believe that she sure was in a tough situation with no solutions. “Migrant Mother” demonstrates a historical indicator of the great depression because it shows this tragedy virtually. We can all feel their sadness and courage to overcome the hard time. Even in nowadays, we are still disciplined from the stories behind those photographs so we won’t make the same mistake and also treasure things and people that we have right now.

Migrant Mother. Photographer: Dorothea Lange

Reference:
The library of congress, American memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html


Drothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An Overview
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html


Photographs:
8b29516r.jpg
8b29527r.jpg
03054r.jpg

Photography And Ethic

Happiness in life

There is a bouncing ball with a happy face underneath my computer monitor in my photograph. I edited the whole photograph by adding the black and white effect except the happy face. The reason that I kept the color of the happy face is that I wanted to emphasize the happiness. As you see the happy face in the photograph, it is hiding in a small corner in my room. It is also small and not easy to find. Just like our life, we might have find life is tough, busy and complicated like the black and while background. 

Sometimes we have negative views in life, getting tired and we want to give it all up.However, happiness is everywhere, just like the happy face in the photograph. Although it might not be as obvious in our life, but it does exist in so many ways and places. Happiness can be simple, having a great breakfast in the morning, taking a nap in the afternoon, watching TV at night. 

There is always more than one way to see things and different ways of thinking can affect our opinions. The happy face is now more visible after the editing process which emphasizes my point of view-happiness is everywhere.

Although we can't change the weather, we can always change our mood.

Before

After

Different point of view

As we see in the original photograph, there is a girl wearing sun glasses with a sunny and beautiful background. I edited the photograph using photoshop and I added effects on that since I wanted to portray how our minds change by different elements. We see that the background is very beautiful, full of joyfulness with sunshine. The girl in the original photograph sees and thinks the world with positive and happy feelings. However, once the sun glasses are put on, the whole world become negative and sad. Sometimes we see our life in a positive way, but it might not be the reality as most of the people ignore the truth and the potential risks in life. Negative and bad things usually hide behind the peace, for example most of the Canadians have a good living style, living in a good house and having good food every day. But we always forget and ignore the fact that there are many homeless people living on the streets. Sadness is hiding behind the scene and it has always been ignored. We should start learning to observe more from what we see, trying to analysis things in different ways and show more concern to our society.  

Before

After