What do you normally think of women in disasters? What is your impression of women in the Great Depression? Weak? Submissive? Victimized? That is the general view of women in disasters. However, if you were to look closely at the photographs taken during the Depression, you will see another representation of women: women who are strong, independent, determined, and unwilling to give up in the face of adversity. This page is a tribute to those women.
Gender is rarely analyzed in disasters by researchers, especially women in disaster, and many find the subject to be “too narrow,” so I decided to look into this topic further as I focused on the Great Depression. Many photographs portraying victims of the time, especially in the farmlands, were taken through the photography project of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the conditions of the struggling farmers as well as to promote its goals to the public. Because there were thousands of photos to look at, I narrowed my scope to comparing and contrasting two photographers, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, and on how they depicted women in their work. In general, many of the pictures depict women as weak and victimized; however, due to their different techniques, we see more women portrayed in a more positive and stronger light by Lange.
Dorothea Lange Walker Evans
Images taken from:
http://www.knowla.org/entry/1248/&view=image-gallery
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dorothea_Lange_1936_portrait.jpg