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Dorothea Lange in Oregon: 1939

Security Administration Photos

An Exhibition presented by,

Four Rivers Cultural Center

In association with Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

October 14 – December 23, 2011

The grand opening will begin
7:00 PM on Friday, October 14

This will be a wine and cheese reception.

At 6:00 PM on Friday, October 14, curator David Milholland will present

“Dorthea Lange in the Pacific Northwest "
an audio-visual chronicle.

At 12:00 noon on Saturday, October 15, curator Milholland will present readings of the Literary Voices of the Great Depression.

The Farm Security Administration’s best known photographer, considered one of the most important photographers in America, Dorothea Lange was dispatched to Malheur County to photograph humanity in America during the depression.  The governments primary objective was to set out to portray the suffering of rural Americans in terms understandable to the urban middle class.  Folks in the city were unaware of the hardship that the rural people were experiencing.  What better way to make them aware than to show them the visceral images of these people and their lives.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture was funding several irrigation projects in the county, so it seemed a logical place for the government to send her.

The exhibit consists of 48 of the images she took in our area.  There are photos of the landscape and the people living in Cow Hollow, Nyssa Heights, Dead Ox Flats, Ontario Heights, Willow Creek and surrounding areas in Idaho.  There are people in these photographs that still live in our area today.  Each of the extremely large photos is captioned identifying the subject(s) and the location.

Lange’s most widely acclaimed photograph is “Migrant Mother” (1936), a picture taken in Nipomo, California that remains the single most significant icon of the Great Depression and a testament to the contrast between the inner strength and pride and the impoverished nature of her surroundings.

These photos document our local history.  Many of the images will be of things that local citizens will recognize.  Many of these locations if photographed in Black and White today look frighteningly similar to 1939.