Tag: Depression era

Grab a Hunk of Lightning

Migrant Mother, photograph by Dorothea Lange, Nipomo, California, 1936
Dorothea Lange

It’s not often that a film inspires me to write a blog entry, but here we are. I have been inspired, and I’m writing about it. The film is Grab a Hunk of Lightning, a story about Dorothea Lange.

Lange was among the greatest twentieth-century American photographers; she made the iconic photograph above. Due to bad timing, it very nearly didn’t happen: it was raining, and the camp of pea-pickers hadn’t worked that day. After a long and tiring day of work, Dorothea decided to drive right past the entrance to the camp, and almost immediately she second-guessed herself. She turned around and drove in.

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