Dorothea Lange: bearing witness

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For fear the hearts of men are failing,
For these are latter days we know
The Great Depression now is spreading,
God's word declared it would be so

 

I'm going where there's no depression,
To the lovely land that's free from care
I'll leave this world of toil and trouble,
My home's in Heaven, I'm going there

In that bright land, there'll be no hunger,
No orphan children crying for bread,
No weeping widows, toil or struggle,
No shrouds, no coffins, and no death

This dark hour of midnight nearing
And tribulation time will come
The storms will hurl in midnight fear
And sweep lost millions to their doom

 Dorothea Lange-on taking her most famous photograph, Migrant Mother-

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration photographer, in California with her camera- a Graflex 4x5 Series D. 1936

first recorded by the original Carter Family in 1936 during the Great Depression. Although A.P. Carter has frequently been credited as the author, some sources attribute the song to James David Vaughan.
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