© Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange is perhaps better known for her work for the FSA during the Great Depression. While documenting the dispossessed of the American society she captured the image of the ‘Migrant Mother’, a picture that has become not only iconic, but has also been reproduced in almost every book that refers to a history of photography.
Although, Lange’s career has been overshadowed and haunted by her work for the FSA in general and the image of Florence Owens Thompson in particular, she produced work which has not drawn so much attention, but is nevertheless as important and historical.
Some 69 years ago, on December 7th 1941 Japan launched a surprise military attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, which resulted to the death of more than 2,000 military personnel. The next day the U.S.A declared war to Japan and officially entered WWII. But, the U.S response to this unexpected attack was not only her involvement with the war, but also it was aimed internally having as a primary target American citizens of Japanese descent living in the Pacific Coast of the U.S. With the motto ‘a Jap’s a Jap’, combined with political and media propaganda, which enforced prejudice and influenced the white population of the area, the relocation and internment of more than 150,000 Japanese-Americans started in 1942.
Lange was commissioned in the same year by the War Relocation Authority to record the Zeitgeist of the Japanese community and its internment in camps. But the photographer’s critical stance, which was to showcase the ‘Americanism’ of the Japanese-Americans and by expansion to signify their unjust treatment made the Army to seize her images and her job was to stop there.
To me these pictures are not only historical, but also contemporary. Foremost, they remind me of the little attention international media have paid on the backlash against the American Muslim communities after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And to quote George Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
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