DB 6 - Presentation Week 6: Documenting the great depression

The Farm Security Administration- Office of War Information Collection has black and white pictures that revolutionized the history of documentary photography. The black and white images show American people at home,work and at a play from the time of the Great Depression up to World War Two (1935-1945). The photographs have a particular emphasis on Americans living in rural areas and small towns and the effects that the Great Depression had up to the end of World War Two on the American People. Some of the most famous photographs of this collection are of people that were
"displaces from farms and migrated West or to industrial cities in search of work." ( Para. 1, Sen. 3)  In the FSA-OWI's later years it "documented on America's mobilization for World War Two." (Para 1, Sen. 4)  The FSA-OWI has 164,000 black and white negatives as well as 1600 color photographs.

The "Migrant Mother" picture is a photograph that Dorothea Mange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or march 1936 in California. The "Migrant Mother" photograph Showed the human side of  people during the great depression. The "Migrant Mother" Photograph was published to help the people during the time of the great depression. This photograph helped the other people really define the great depression just by looking at it.

The role of the "Migrant Mother" nowadays is to remind us that in the past middle and lower class Americans went through some very hard times during the great depression. America is going through tough economic times and that the current economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. Even though times are tough for Americans now look at athe "Migrant Mother" photograph and learn from the past because nobody wants to go through what Florence Owens Thompson went through during the great depression. Make a better present and future in times like these and have more options to help people if should a recession or another great depression come around and not to repeat the same mistakes we have made in the past regarding situations like the great depression.