Margaret Bourke-White documented the impoverished lives of tenant farmers in the Depression with writer Erskine Caldwell in their book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces’ (1937), one of the first books to show this kind of imagery in America.
Like Hine, Bourke-White’s images were used as evidence to inform the public of the harsh lives of tenant farmers in the 1930s.
The farmers are shown at work and this photograph also gives the subject dignity and iconifies her too.
This photograph, as with Hine, is trying to urgently communicate to us.
