The phrase “The Dust Bowl,” often conjures up images of Dorothea Lange’s (b.1895-d.1965) famous photograph, Migrant Mother, or John Steinbeck’s (b.1939-d.1968) novel, The Grapes of Wrath, which was based on the Sunset Labor camp located a few miles southeast of the CSUB campus. Whether through photographs or text these platforms were created with the intent to elicit an emotional response from the public. Up until the twentieth century, the ethics and critical analysis of these works were not examined. Within this framework has been a consequential lack of diversity in how migrant labor was characterized for the American public.
This exhibit looks at the ways migrant laborers, specifically those camped in California, were portrayed in the 1930s. All of the photographs, with the exception of the John Steinbeck portrait, were taken by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange began her professional photographer career during the years of the Great Depression in San Francisco. She became fascinated with the plight of the poor whose lives had been turned upside down by the stock market crash. She was hired for her unparalleled skill of capturing the emotional experiences of her subjects. Dorothea began working for the FSA under the supervision of Paul Taylor, who would later become her husband in 1935. Taylor, a scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, along with Lange would write and publish reports on the conditions of migrant laborers across the United States, but, specifically, Kern County. Later they would publish American Exodus, a book of the same topic. It is this work that helped secure funding for sanitary camps for laborers.
During this time, Steinbeck was working on his, then, notorious novel, The Grapes of Wrath. He worked closely with Tom Collins, the Camp Manager at Weedpatch. Collins not only had an ongoing correspondence at this time, but he also permitted Steinbeck into the camp where he offered labor and interacted with the residents. In fact, Collins was such a great influence and confidant of Steinbeck, that the novel was dedicated to him, “To Tom who lived it.”
It is arguable that Lange and Steinbeck used their respective mediums and, in the case of Steinbeck, celebrity to raise awareness for the suffering of migrant workers. Historical record via correspondences, Steinbeck’s working diaries, and Lange’s field notes it would seem their intentions were truly altruistic in nature. Regardless of how benign these intentions were, their subjects did not have any agency in the reproduction of their images or their narratives. Quite simply, Lange and Steinbeck were interpreting poverty for the rest of America. This exhibit takes a pictorial, chronological look at the experiences of the California migrant laborers from their initial exodus towards the West, sleeping in their jalopies or makeshift tents along the side of the road, to the progression of government-built camps with real floors, sanitary conditions, food, water, schools for children, and more.
