March 1937. Stalled in the Southern California desert. "No money, ten children. From Chickasaw, Oklahoma." View full size. Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.
Submitted by Pelagius on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 3:13pm.
Ms. Lange stopped beside a car full of children that had stalled in a waterless desert. Anybody who stops for a stalled car is stopping to help in some way. At the very least she would carry the news to the next town that there were ten children and their parents stuck in the desert. It's easy to imagine that if she had any money at all to spare, she gave some to this family. (Wouldn't you?) These people were not in the safety of a migrant labor camp. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere.
It is obvious from Ms. Lange's photographs that she was not "immune to poverty." She chose to document the suffering and the humanity of people in poverty. She must have had a good rapport with her subjects, or else their faces would not be so expressive. See myhero.com (http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=d_lange ) for a short biographical essay that stresses her sensitivity and compassion. See also the Wikipedia article about her (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange). "Immune to poverty" is exactly what she was not.
