Photos of Depression era (30 Pics)

Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Photo: Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm laborer on the Pacific Coast. California

Napa Valley, California. More than twenty-five years a bindle-stiff. Walks from the mines to the lumber camps to the farms.

Lange 1936 portrait.

White Angel Breadline taken a few blocks from Lange’s home in Berkeley, CA on a morning photo walk.

Minnesota to Matanuska Alaska Resettlement Project 1936

Texas tenant farmer in Marysville, California, migrant camp during the peach season. 1927 made seven thousand dollars in cotton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 still deeper. 1931 lost everything. 1932 hit the road. 1935, fruit tramp in California

San Francisco, Calif., April 1942. First-graders, some of Japanese ancestry, at the Weill public school pledging allegience to the United States flag. The evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War relocation authority centers for the duration of the war

Ex-tenant farmer on relief grant in the Imperial Valley, California 1937

Soper grandmother, who lives with family. FSA (Farm Security Administration) borrower. Willow Creek area. Malheur County, Oregon. 1939

Young mother, twenty five, says “Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers.” Rural shacktown, near Klamath Falls, Oregon. 1939

Was Nebraska farmer, now migrant farm worker in the West. Merrill, Klamath County, Oregon. 1939

Migratory boy, aged eleven, and his grandmother work side by side picking hops. Started work at five a.m. Photograph made at noon. Temperature 105 degrees. Oregon, Polk County, near Independence. 1939

Washington, Yakima Valley, near Wapato. One of Chris Adolph’s younger children. Farm Security Administration Rehabilitation clients 1939

Migratory children living in “Rambler’s Park.” They have lived on the road for three years. Nine children in the family. Yakima Valley, Washington 1939

Tobacco sled Published between 1935-1942

Member of the congregation of Wheeley’s church who is called “Queen.” She is wearing the old fashioned type of sunbonnet. Her dress and apron were made at home. Near Gordonton, North Carolina 1939

Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. The kerosene pump on the right and the gasoline pump on the left. Rough, unfinished timber posts have been used as supports for porch roof. Men are sitting on the porch. Brother of store owner stands in doorway. Gordonton, North Carolina 1939

Tobacco sharecropper ready to return to the field. Person County, North Carolina 1939

Daughter helps pick off insects from tobacco.

Corner of kitchen. Home of tobacco sharecropper. Person County, North Carolina 1939

1936 drought refugee from Polk, Missouri. Awaiting the opening of orange picking season at Porterville, California

Mississippi Delta children 1936

Turpentine worker’s family near Cordele, Alabama. Father’s wages one dollar a day. This is the standard of living the turpentine trees support 1936

Plowboy in Alabama earns seventy-five cents daily 1936

Toward Los Angeles, Calif. 1937

Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, Californias 1936

Migrant agricultural worker’s family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is a native Californian. Destitute in pea picker’s camp, Nipomo, California, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Of the twenty-five hundred people in this camp most of them were destitute 1936