Favorite Photographers-Assignment One

Photo by Dorothea Lange

One of my favorite photographers is Dorothea Lange, who, as part of FDR's New Deal and Public Works Act of 1933, went out into the United States to document the "American Scene."  

This photo is entitled "Migrant Mother."  Through the years, the meaning of this photo has changed for me.  While I know that it is widely known, it is meaningful to me for several reasons, so bear with me.

I have spent the last sixteen years of my career as a gifted support teacher for elementary students.  If you have ever encountered a gifted child who attends a somewhat affluent school district, you know that there is little they don't know and little they haven't experienced, but Dorothea Lange helped me out of that jam.  At least once a year for the past five or six years since our school acquired a set of prints entitled "Picturing America," I have pulled out this heart-wrenching, over-sized print for my fifth grade students.  It is one of my favorite lessons.  It begins with John Deere and his invention of farm machinery designed to rid the west of prairie grass and diverges in all sorts of directions.  Education and thinking at it's finest.

This photo also reminds me to be so very grateful for what I have as a woman and mother in these modern times.  Of course, my husband and children benefit greatly from these times as well.  I own a book of Dorothea Lange's photos and when I look at it, I go elsewhere in my mind.  Her images stir so many emotions and thoughts, it is difficult to corral them into coherent categories, but looking at this photo, I'm sure you understand.

Photo by Diane Arbus

Another favorite, and yes, possibly trite, is Diane Arbus.  I have always been fascinated by unusual photographs and unusual people, people-watching being one of my unofficial hobbies.  I share my love of Diane Arbus with my dear, late friend Helen Croft.  She was an artist who taught us all and specifically, worked in the school where I work.  

Helen taught me how to reach students in a different way and when I didn't feel I was creative enough to pull off a lesson designed to reach those kids for whom creative processing was a strength, she would patiently walk me through the activity.  Whenever I found myself pining to be cool, artistic and impossibly hip, I would look at Helen who indeed was artistic, but lived a typical life with a husband, children and a job.  Sometimes she was hip and cool, sometimes not.  I see that in Arbus's photos.  People who appear to be cooler than anyone ever has been or ever will be, some who are typical (not that often) and some who are just plain tragic, which is how we all felt when Helen left us.  For one of her last birthdays, another friend and I pooled resources and purchased Helen a beautiful Diane Arbus book.  I cannot look at an Arbus photo and not think of how thrilled Helen was when she unwrapped the gift and how we flipped through the book, pointing out our favorites.