During the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange used her photography to document the poverty that resulted from The Great Depression.  Americans were astonished and shocked to see the impoverished images of people, families, and children living in such conditions in America.  Her pictures, in effect, helped alleviate human suffering.

Dorothea contracted Polio at seven that left her with a limp for the rest of her life.  She said that it was the most important thing that ever happened to her.  It changed how she looked at things.  After school, she used to have to walk home through some dangerous parts of town and she developed what she called a “Cloak of Invisibility”  that enabled her to ‘see’ without being seen.  It was especially useful later in life when she took pictures of people, naturally, that really didn’t even know they were the subject of her photo.  She did not pose her pictures.

“Hands off!  I do not molest what I photograph, I do not meddle and I do not arrange.” Dorothea Lange

We did a picture study last year and I was introduced to Dorothea Lange for the first time.  I was so struck by the photo, The Migrant Worker, especially after truly studying it.  Immediately, I fell in love with her photography.

Photo By Dorothea Lange

It was a significant reason that I decided to study her for one of our terms this year.  She was known as a Documentary Photographer but no one had ever documented pictures such as these before in quite the way she did.

Photo By Dorothea Lange

The images are haunting.  Especially the children.

“The benefit of seeing can come only if you pause awhile, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick expressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image…the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.”  Dorothea Lange

At our homeschool Christmas Party this December, we made Blessing Bags for the homeless.  (Inspiration from Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.)  We stuffed socks (donated from Wal-Mart), toothpaste, floss, and toothbrushes (donated from Matthews Dental Care), gum, snacks, tissues, hand warmers, chap-stick and more.

Photo by Neecie Herndon

Photo by Neecie Herndon

Mostly what was stuffed in them was love.

Photo by Neecie Herndon

And then, just this week, we took these to the homeless, and let the children give, see, and pause.

I brought my camera.  Dorothea Lange, I am not.

But I did pause.

she inquired, “Who will take them home in the morning?”

I replied, “They don’t have a home sweetheart.”

“They desired only that we should remember the poor…”  Galatians 2:10