Children in a democracy. A migratory family living in a trailer in an open field

 
"Dorothea Lange, whose photographs of the unemployed and migratory farm workers became synonymous with the Great Depression, was born on May 26, 1895. The caption of this photo reads "On Arizona Highway 87, south of Chandler. Maricopa County, Arizona. Children in a democracy. A migratory family living in a trailer in an open field. No sanitation, no water. They came from Amarillo, Texas. Pulled bolls near Amarillo, picked cotton near Roswell, New Mexico, and in Arizona. Plan to return to Amarillo at close of cotton picking season for work on WPA." 

The photo is one of a series taken for an agricultural "Community Stability and Instability" study by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Taken by Dorothea Lange and Irving Rusinow, the photographs are a record of pre-World War II rural life and social institutions. Of particular interests are images of African Americans in Alabama and Georgia and migrant laborers hired to work in cotton fields in Arizona and California..." 
Dorothea Lange photography

How Photography Shaped America's National Parks

"Have you ever gotten a postcard from a national park? Chances are the picture that comes to mind—maybe the powerful eruption of Old Faithful spouting up in Yellowstone or the rocky depths of the Grand Canyon—is the same shot that people across the world have seen.

There’s a reason for that. The idea of America’s national parks that's ingrained in the collective consciousness has been shaped through more than 150 years of photographing them, Jamie Allen contends in her new book, Picturing America’s Parks.

You might be surprised by just how important a role photography played in constructing what America thinks of as national parks today. Allen, an associate curator at the George Eastman Museum, weeds through the parks' origins, critically exploring the forces behind those now-iconic visages..."
National parks