THE PURPOSEFUL POWER OF PHOTOS: Genre 5: Pea-Picker Camp Stockroom Food Inventory

The Purposeful Power of Photos

Photos are everywhere. From snapshots, to school pictures, to glossy magazine spreads, we have seen images in almost every context of life for our entire lives, often not stopping to think about how those images came to appear on the page and what made that possible: the camera. I want to research the effect that photos have had on society since the development of the camera. I wonder why photos even resonate with us and exactly what aspects in an image are so enthralling that we remember them forever. Why do certain picture touch us, make us shift our point of view, or even inspire us to act? I want to learn why photos even matter, and why and how their purposeful power can affect their viewers.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Genre 5: Pea-Picker Camp Stockroom Food Inventory

In March, 1936, a photographer named Dorothea Lange took a series of photographs of a migrant worker family at a pea-picker camp in Nipomo, California. The most famous of the photographs, Migrant Mother, featured Florence Owens Thompson and three of her seven children. Lange was working for the Resettlement Administration and the photograph raised awareness of the destitute conditions in the camps. Within days, the pea-picker camp where the photo was taken received over 20,000 pounds of food from the federal government.

I created a stockroom inventory from the pea-picker camp in Nipomo, CA where the photograph was taken.

THE PURPOSEFUL POWER OF PHOTOS