AA’s “Trailer Camp Children” – a closer look at the psychology

[RichardSperry]

" that Reminds Me of Suffering Among Migrant Farm Workers"

Seriously?

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-02/l...e?_s=PM:LIVING

[RichardSperry]

I need to follow up on something. It doesn't make any difference to the photo. It's just a logical question I have about how people think.

When you guys say that "they were not pea pickers" what do you mean?
That they did not pick peas at all.
Or that at the pea farm where the photo was taken there was no work, so they couldn't pick peas at this farm that season?

If its the first...
In the Central Valley, the notion that a migrant farm worker >doesn't< pick this or that is pretty alien. That's like going up to Manual Trabajo in May when he's picking cherries, and telling him that he's NOT a grape picker(in August). You'll more often than not get an earful of Spanish if you said something absurd like that. Now the crops have changed and we don't really have cotton or peas in the valley anymore, but I think it would have been the same then as now. They migrate to where the crops are being harvested throughout the year, that's why they are called migrant farm workers.

Are you saying that these cotton pickers were above picking peas?

If it's the second. That there were no peas to pick because of blight(or too many workers for the job), so they were NOT pea pickers; how does this support the notion that they were too rich to be dirt poor?

Who told you that these migrants did not pick peas, would be another question?

[Doug Howk]

Ansel's recollection of the kids in "trailer-camp children..." is at variance with the description given by a friend of Lange's (see Chapter 13 of Andrea Stillman's "Looking at Ansel Adams..."): "The children are being watched by a neighbor child while the mother is away." Stillman further states, "The image is an anomaly in Ansel's work. Human misery was not something he felt comfortable photographing...". Apparently, the only reason Ansel took this picture is he was challenged by Lange.

[Vaughn]

I need to follow up on something. It doesn't make any difference to the photo. It's just a logical question I have about how people think.

When you guys say that "they were not pea pickers" what do you mean?

In my case, it just meant that MM and family did not arrive at that location to specifically pick peas. They were on their way to a different location to pick a different crop when they broke down at the pea farm.

[RichardSperry]

Fair enough.

Ps, I didn't mean to say that cotton or peas are not grown in the CV anymore. I'm pretty sure that it's all picked by machines these days. Cherries and much of grapes are still picked by hand today.

[ROL]

Pea pickers, Schmee pickers. What a pempest in a peacup! It doesn't seem that any of this minutia addresses the OP's considerations, except that DL's photograph seems to have somehow touched nerves. Having grown up (physically, anyways) in the Central Valley not far from any of the hundreds of crops or shooting locations in question, I can certainly verify that the itinerant farm worker, if not migrant, moves from harvest to harvest throughout the season. Heck, even fresh vegetable crops move these days, from Washington to California to Arizona (now Mexico too), with the harvest. Temporary migrant housing is and has been a subject of local concern for decades. One need only drive through the farming communities of Parlier or Layton off-season to comprehend the situation, or look no further than Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath for first rate dramatic description of the process.

[rdenney]

My point was not to superimpose my (or anyone else's) current political or social policy on an event that happened 75 years ago, but to also be sensitive to the superimposition of political and social philosophy by the people making and presenting the photographs. It brings up questions that seem to me relevant to the discussion of the psychology of such photos.

And it also brings up some issues of how photographers can be quite patronizing in their attitudes towards the poor. Nobody wants to be poor, but the assumption that poor people live in minute-by-minute misery is an over-simplification that, in my experience at least, often offends them.

Adams was not rich and worked hard, but at the end of the day, he would drive home from making these photographs in his own car, to his own house and calm his mind playing his own Mason and Hamlin grand piano. If that isn't at least relevant as the basis for questioning the psychology of these photos, then I don't know what is.

These seem to me important questions if one is going to raise the psychology of such photographs. I'm not sure the answers are necessary, but it seems to me the thought process can't be dismissed, especially on the basis of one's current social viewpoint.

And, no, I'm not inviting a political discussion. The whole point is to question whether these photos survive without that filter.

Rick "thinking Adams's photo works better as a photo than Migrant Mother, when there is no backstory" Denney

[Kirk Gittings]

My family on both sides converged as farm workers in the San Fernando Valley during the Dust Bowl and the migration west. That time is remembered both with anxiety and fondness. Though the times were really really tough, the family was never tighter, loving and mutually supportive.

[Vaughn]

The whole point is to question whether these photos survive without that filter.

Well, Mirgrant Mother, even without the back story and as a (environmental?) portrait, IMO, blows away 99% of what I see on this forum, including my attempts. And the AA image is right there, too.

These seem to me important questions if one is going to raise the psychology of such photographs. I'm not sure the answers are necessary, but it seems to me the thought process can't be dismissed, especially on the basis of one's current social viewpoint.

A fellow I took photo classes with in college has published images of cowboys -- you know the score...you pay some bucks for a workshop/opportunity to photograph cowboys and horses, etc. Sort of like when photographers pay to photograph 'wildlife' (lions, tigers and bears, oh my!) at animal farms. Seeing his work and talking about it it comes out that he dislikes cowboys -- looks down on them as inferior people -- and it shows in his work. I mentioned Jay Dusard to him and how Jay would help the ranch hands gathering cattle, etc. The fellow dissed Jay for it. The fellow also does landscapes and invited me to go with him, saying his 4WD Suburban could get us over the berms the gov't uses to block dirt roads and we could get anywhere we wanted to go. I declined.

So when taking landscapes, how important is one's connection to the land? Can someone whose concept of getting into the wilds is to drive to a pull-out on the highway and walk no more than 20 feet from the car to snap his/her photo really have any connection to what s/he is photographing? Are their landscape images more or less important than, let's say, those of an ex-wilderness ranger? Probably not so much difference to be seen in the images I suppose.

AA's image -- is it actually looking down? He used a Rollieflex -- most likely with a waist-level finder. I think that the lens was about even with the boy's face, and perhaps pointed slight down.

[Brian C. Miller]

Well, Mirgrant Mother, even without the back story and as a (environmental?) portrait, IMO, blows away 99% of what I see on this forum, including my attempts. And the AA image is right there, too.

When was the last time that you went in search of subjects like that? Adams and Lange were looking for those subjects, and of course they found them. They wanted to find people who were living on the "edge," just getting by on not very much money at all. Also, all of the subjects had to look downcast and impoverished. Even when my family lived in a car, there were very few totally glum moments.

I used to live in trailer parks (when I started photographing with my Petax 6x7, I was living in an 18ft 1967 Fireball travel trailer), and these days you would have to work to find people like that because development has eaten up a lot of these trailer parks. One place where I used to live has been converted into duplexes, condos and apartments. Other trailer parks are very high-priced, so none of the poor can possibly live in them. (Seriously, $700/mo for a speck of ground??) And in a trailer park, there are all kinds of social-economic strata, from metally disfunctional people to (my next-door neighbor for a while) an airline pilot.

The next time some of you go camping, look around for a family. Ask them to help you recreate Migrant Mother. Or better yet, go to a homeless camp and make some photographs of the people there.