The photographer was Dorothea Lange.
In early 1935, […] Lange began to work for the California State Emergency Relief Administration. That summer, the agency was transferred to the RA, which had recently begun a photodocumentary project to draw attention to the plight of the rural poor. (In 1937, the RA would become the Farm Security Administration, or FSA.) Lange worked for the FSA periodically between 1935 and 1939, primarily traveling around California, the Southwest, and the South to document the hardships of migrant farmers who had been driven west by the twin devastations of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
She’s the photographer who took the “Migrant Mother” series, some of the most iconic images of the Depression.
Holy cow, the wife looks hardly 25 years old. They really popped kids out back to back in them days. I guess it’s true you just believed in the Lord, had a bunch of young’uns, and hoped and prayed to Jesus Christ at least one of them made it to adulthood. Contrast that to the middle class lifestyle of many Americans just a little more than a decade later and it becomes even more of a mind-blower.
Better dressed than most modern people with a home and employment.
This was before fast fashion. Clothes were more expensive, but better made. You had far fewer pieces of clothing, and you’d repair them if they got worn, torn, loose seams, etc. The fact that there are five people carrying a small suitcase and a rolled-up pack between them suggests that most - if not all - of their clothes are on their backs.
