¶ … Photographic Analysis of Dorothea Lange's Political And Artistic Vision: Candidate for Congress (General Walter Faulkner) and a Tennessee farmer. Crossville, Tennessee

"Although many do not know her name, her photographs live in the subconscious of virtually anyone in the United States who has any concept of that economic disaster" (Gordon 698). Yet, as noted by professor of history Linda Gordon, Lange was not someone who idly wandered in amongst the farm workers whose images she captured on film. She had a highly specific political agenda and had been hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to capture her images. There has been a dual, contrasting interpretation of Lange through the ages, one perspective which views her work as essentially political, like Gordon, while others like James Curtis who see her work as more personal than political: "Lange sought to create a transcendent image that would communicate her sense of the migrants' condition. She created a portrait that incorporated elements she knew her contemporaries would understand and find worthy of support" (Curtis 2). This dual sense of both politics and art can be seen not only in Lange's most famous photographs like Migrant Mother but also in less controversial shots like Candidate for Congress (General Walter Faulkner) and a Tennessee farmer. Crossville, Tennessee: ultimately, rather than viewing Lange's work in either/or terms, as either political or artistic, it is important to respect her fusion of both.

In the case of the photograph Candidate for Congress, the political implications are more subtle than in some of Lange's other works. A well-fed man in a white Cornel Sanders-style seersucker suit and a straw boater stands before a large car with a sign on top of it. General Walter Faulkner's status is evident by his imposing stature and his clean-shaven face and the fact that he holds a book shows that he represents someone with power -- the power of city life, literacy, and wealth. In contrast, the farmer with whom he is speaking is skinny, evidently underfed, and holds a pitchfork in hand. He has a neatly-trimmed white beard, suspenders, and a hat on and he has evidently tried to make himself look as good as he can in front of this politician. But there is a clear and stark contrast between the poverty and manual labor of one and the lack of labor of the other.

The implication is clearly that the man who is running for office has not done a day of hard work and does not fully understand the struggles of the farmer. The farmer is putting his hopes in the politician and the fact that the two of them are standing close together and the farmer is reaching out, appealing to Faulkner, shows his vulnerability, trust, and desperation. The farmer appears unspoiled, homespun, and trusting, while the whiteness of the politician in the suit shows his attempt to put on a show of being a man in a white hat, symbolically rescuing the lower-class members of society. Even the children on the periphery of the photograph show this contrast of city and country, wealth and destitution. There is a young boy dressed almost exactly like the farmer standing there, watching the events transpire before him while two other children, perhaps the son and daughter of the politician, are dressed in crisp shorts and a shirt.

Gordon would no doubt see the documentarian in Lange's evident contrast of the man who supposedly represents the interest of farmers with the actual farmers themselves. The photograph is clearly labeled as "set" in Tennessee, which Gordon calls one of the four corners or types of agriculture evident in the Southern United States. "Sharecropping in the South" was probably the least equitable form of farming from the farmer's perspective ... In the Southeast, slavery had built a plantation economy, which then adapted to a technically 'free' labor force by compelling ex-slaves and many poor whites to become sharecroppers (Gordon 699). The inequities between the poor farmer (who is not explicitly labeled a sharecropper but who seems to be far poorer than the man whom he is appealing to represent his interests) and the politician is dramatically illustrated in the contrast between his attire and that of the man in the suit. The fact that the farmer's son (or grandson) is similarly attired as the farmer highlights the extent to which inequities are passed down from generation to generation. Just like General Faulkner's children (or those dressed like him) are wearing fine clothes not suited for manual labor, the farmer's children wear clothes that mark them out as being destined for working in the...

Despite changes in agriculture, including the greater mechanization of the process, the class system of the South seems unwaveringly consistent.
There are even racial implications, given the overpowering and blinding whiteness of the politician's suit. Of course, both men in the photograph are white (the fact that there are no African-Americans may itself be telling, given black disempowerment in regards to the right to vote). But the fact that Faulkner is attired entirely in white versus the farmer who wears faded and dusty work clothes suggests that it is the politician who possesses the power of whiteness, not the farmer. The farmer may perceive himself to be allied with the politician but their different interests are dramatically illustrated both by their clothing and the fact that the politician carries in his hand the symbol of literacy (a book) versus the symbol of work, the pitchfork, carried by the farmer. The farmer might conceivably have interests that are more aligned with African-American sharecroppers and poor farmers like himself but he seems attracted by and overpowered by the vision of whiteness before him. It is to this white-clad politician that he extends his arm, not to his fellow farmers or to laborers of color.

Of course, there are troubling ethical implications regarding the rendering of a unique individual into a purely symbolic entity. Regarding Lange, it is said that "in the field, she often recoiled from the desperate poverty arrayed before her camera. How could she justify an art that literally fed on the starvation of the poor?" (Curtis 2). Curtis, in contrast to Gordon, notes the internal conflict Lange often experienced as an artist, as she was effectively taking the raw material of individual's lives and rendering them into 'material' for her art. Individuals in photographs perhaps almost inevitably become symbols. Even the famous and much-anthologized Migrant Mother had a life far beyond that of the Lange photograph and yet she is still viewed primarily in terms of her symbolic significance to Lange, as if she did not have an existence beyond the framework of her photograph.

However, arguably even as an artistic product Lange's photograph still has great merit. Lange does not obviously arrange the politician and the farmer but their apparently spontaneous relationship and the stark color contrast between grey and white is illustrative of both of the class dynamics of the agricultural economy of the South as well as is an arresting visual display. The overwhelming and overpowering nature of whiteness versus the darkness of the farmer's life demonstrates how art can convey political truth without losing its artistic quality. The photograph is both beautiful and meaningful simultaneously.

This ability to fuse artistry and politics versus to emphasize one at the expense of the other is the hallmark of Lange's art and why her vision is so indelible, as is evidenced not only in her own images but other surviving works from the period, including the film of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the photographs of Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Her vision transcends that of the far more prosaic initial vision of the Roosevelt Administration's intention in soliciting photographs from artists such as Lange. Initially, "the FSA's photography project was supposed to promote not only Department of Agriculture programs but also a New Deal vision for rural America, a difficult assignment because of the incoherence of that vision. The project reaffirmed family-farm ideology through its frequently romantic, picturesque approach to a 'simple' and community-spirited rural life and its condemnation of plantation and industrial agriculture" (Gordon 700-701). On the surface, the image of the political gathering could, arguably, be viewed simply as a simple slice of life, or a meeting of a farmer with a local politician. But without substantively changing the arrangement of the figures in the work, in her use of artistic color contrast and her centralized focus on the two opposing figures, Lange's work demonstrates the inability to separate the artist's politics and her art. The choice of a politician all in white is singular, even though such white suits must have been common in the sweltering south amongst the aristocratic elites.

Through her artistic use of the color white and contrasting shading in the photo, Lange also manages to add additional significance to the project of the FSA, transcending its celebration of homespun, rural life and showing the contradictions, particularly the racial contradictions inherent in…