Tenant farmer. Chatham County, North Carolina
1939 July.
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA
hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c30148
Eyes of the Great Depression 020 – March 21, 2009, exit78.com
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Comments on this entry are closed.
Of course we'll never know but I wonder what he would be doing if he lived in this day and age?
<abbr>Jannie Funster’s last blog post..After May 10th</abbr>
You can see the pain in his eyes.
<abbr>Rose DesRochers’s last blog post..Vanity publishing- International Society of Photography</abbr>
Jannie, I think we are getting ready to find out if things don't turn around soon….
<abbr>Debo Hobo’s last blog post..Knock It Off! Cut It Out! Stop It!</abbr>
There's so much hurt and disappointment in this man's expressive face, and his eyes seem to be asking, "How could this happen?"
<abbr>Dot’s last blog post..The Painfulness of Hope</abbr>
I have to agree with Debo. I hope we don't have to though. He sure does look sad and depressed.
<abbr>teeni’s last blog post..Just Passing Through…</abbr>
Jannie – If he was still alive, he'd probably be in his 90s marveling at the changes that have occurred over his life, especially in the last few months much as has a very active black lady whose blog I read who would have been 17 when this picture was taken.
Rose – Yes, it could be pain. Or it could be the skeptical look of a black tenant farmer at the white lady photographer during the height of Jim Crow in the American South.
Debo Hobo – I hope we don't get to the depths of misery that society was in in 1939.
Dot – I doubt very much that this man has come down from something better, though it is possible. He was likely a tenant farmer before the Depression, though it is possible that he could have been a landowner that sank into tenant farming because of debt.
teeni – Just looking at his eyes, I agree. However, in the whole, I see a tension between two different cultural and ethnic worlds. The white lady that took this picture also took another picture of a woman in California that she promised would not be published. That photo was the famous "Migrant Mother" photograph that was used to highlight the plight of migrants to the rest of the country.