Bridge Project: Part V

Weaving all of the information learned, and experienced, this year to create a narrative of Humanities.

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Protest, as seen, can vary in mediums. Though the mediums are different, the underlying, or overlying, message is still the same: fighting the unjust of society for a greater equality. Certain parts of society have a monopoly on terror or false stigmas which create a more diverged world. Whether the protest is direct or indirect, it is always backed by someone with a purpose and strong desire to make a change or expose the true feelings of one's self or common group that understands the conflict and shares the similar pain.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange shows a mother surrounded by her two children and carrying her third sitting in the Dust Bowl in California during the Great Depression era. This is arguably one of the most famous photographs in the world. The mother has a stern, scolding expression on her face staring to the side in worry and contemplation. Her children grasp her and hide their faces away from the camera. The story behind the photograph is what makes it for great protest, which eventually led to action by the US government.

"She said that [she and her children] had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food." Lange said in an interview, according to www.pbs.org. The Great Depression took a great toll on Americans; "She was to represent the very Figure of Poverty." Lange says in the same interview from pbs. Government did not act. The Great Depression damaged the economy, social life, and all that fall under the hand of these institutions. The photographs that Lange took grew nationwide talk and sparked movement by the government to send aid to those that were immensely affected by the Great Depression; living in tents under the heat and trapped in dust bowls.

Lange protested against the governments inability to do anything. The inability to work towards solving the problem of the collapse of the American Dream. Her protest took form of an interpretation of poverty and indirect war. Her artwork, similar to Pablo Picassos' Guernica speaks volumes at depicting those that are hurt by issues that deal with a higher power or higher form of authority: the leaders of their respective states. Protest is what connects all these artists and their artworks. They use their mediums to express themselves and give voice to those that appear to be voiceless.