Dorothea Lange's photographs on the Great Depression

When the crisis burst out, Lange was operating a portrait studio for wealthy families in California but she soon abandoned her cozy cocoon because she felt that her skills could be used differently and more efficiently.
Urged by ethical, political and social reasons, she decided to spend her time taking photos about the crisis. Now she would tell the stories of the subjects captured by her camera. One of her most famous photographs, White Angel Breadline shows people waiting in queues in the streets of San Francisco for food.

Nonetheless she was not sure about the validity of her action because she knew she was invading the privacy of these hungry and homeless people. But no one seemed to care and they let her take photographs.

In 1935 the Farm Security Administration was created to fight poverty. They hired photographers whose work was to document the government on struggling farmers, and Lange became one of them. Her works depicted suffering families and harsh working conditions. They were considered as a political tool and explained the disastrous effects of the Depression. As a consequence they helped change the agricultural policies of the time because people became aware of the disaster which was spreading all over the country.
Dorothea Lange’s goal was now to motivate changes and improvements in the policy of the government and she continued taking moving photographs but she adopted a new technique: by focusing on one individual and by showing their difficulties, the public would understand the problem as a whole.

She was then assisted by her husband, Berkeley Professor Paul Taylor who denounced the crisis in his writings, but as words were not enough he asked his wife to complete his work by photographing the situation. They both worked on rural poverty for five years with the hope that things would improve. Their action was not vain because as they were providing large information about a migrant camp where the famous photograph Migrant Mother was taken, the government took pity on the unfortunate homeless and they sent provisions to prevent starvation.