Art

The picture was taken by Dorothea Lange on 1935, it is called Resettled Farm Child from Taos junction to Bosque farms project, New Mexico. She has used a Medium-format nitrate negative for the Resettlement Administration. Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965) was a prominent Depression era photojournalist. Her Great Depression photos were produced during employment by the FSA. With her camera, she turned national attention on migrant families. Featured works provide an archival look at the early-mid 20th century. As a photographer, Dorothea Lange was influential in detailing migrant living.She has exerted a profound influence on the development of modern documentary photography. Langes concern for people, her appreciation of the ordinary, and the striking empathy she showed for her subjects make her unique among photographers of her day.

Langes work as a portrait photographer enhanced her ability to see striking images in the field and endowed her photographs with a special personal and emotional quality. Even her method of using large, fixed-tripod cameras, instead of the smaller, lighter 35mm cameras favored by other field photographers, distinguished her field work. These cameras, which were more stationary and personal than 35mm, created a polite space between Lange and her subjects, and allowed her to establish direct contact until the last moment when she bowed her head over the viewfinder and snapped the photo. The cameras allowed shots to be composed in a careful, unrushed manner. She only used natural lighting, again less intrusive, more nuanced, and more authentic in documenting the scene. Some critics have attributed her method as critical to the effectiveness of her work.

Photograph Description
    There is this young girl sitting on a bench between a fireplace and a bed, looking sad or bored, staring aimlessly at the fireplace. The photo taken at that time on Bosque farms,
New Mexico. Bosque Farms is just south of the Isleta Pueblo in Valencia County, New Mexico. Today it is part of the Albuquerque metro area, and has mostly upscale homes with enough room for folks to have horses if they choose. It had been part of early Spanish land grants, and a number of different owners had rancheros in the area. In 1935 the Federal Resettlement Administration bought a large tract there from the state and divided it into 42 parcels which were settled by Dust Bowl refugees from Taos and Harding counties in New Mexico. Small adobe homes were constructed for those resettled, and a number of those homes are still in use today. The original intent was for agricultural livelihoods for those resettled, and that held true for a number of years. However, today it is primarily a bedroom community for Albuquerque.

Reviews
    There were a couple of books published, reviewing Dorothea Langes work. One of them was written by Linda Gordon. She concluded on that book

    Yet her photographs have had an extraordinary impact even in the most prosperous of times they may well live forever. There will always be a need to be reminded that beauty can be found in unlikely places, that we must learn to see beyond the limits of the conventional and the expected. Such indelible images mean more, not less, if we understand how they came to exist. They were produced not by a faultless genius who could remain about the wounds, failings and sins that afflict the rest of us, but by a fallible and hardworking woman. They were produced also by historical times she lived in, times optimistic and pessimistic, times that honored generous, compassionate, and respectful impulses of Americans and time that encouraged the closed, fearful, and intolerant. Langes photographs will always evoke the best of American democracy. (Gordon 2009)
    And also on Unshuttered lens by Carol Conrad  she stated

Langes work for both the FSABAE and the WRAOWI created powerful images that helped drive public policy through a critical period in American history. Raising artistry in the field to new levels, her work had a lasting impact on the field of documentary photography. Her unshuttered lens helped millions of Americans to see history, both then and today. (Conrad 2010)
But probably the most renowned work of photography done by Lange was called the Migrant mother series.The five photos now archived in the Library of Congress are the creations of an artist while at the top of her talent. Dorothea Lange took them on 45 film with a Graflex camera. They show the mother, a baby, and up to three older children. The mother sits with a common posture throughout. She leans forward and to her right, toward the photographer but sideways into the tent, with her lower legs pulled slightly back. Her childrens postures are slumped, as if to convey defeat and resignation. Their faces (where visible) show no expression. The iconic image is a close-up. Two of Florences children are behind her and back-on, leaving little doubt about who is the central figure. She looks away from the camera, her face thoughtful, worried, her body inclined toward the flimsy dwelling, a baby on her lap. Her right hand, placed prominently against the face, pulling down the corner of a lip, shows a delicacy of manner that contrasts with the dirt under its nails.

The mission given to Dorothea Lange by her boss Roy Emerson Stryker was to take pictures that would support the New Deal agenda of the Resettlement Administrations (later known as the Farm Security Administrations) documentary project. This agenda aimed to improve conditions for poor farmers and sharecroppers brought to poverty by the economic Depression. Stryker believed in scripting his photographers to capture in pictures the human side of pressing social and economic concerns of the day. With one exception, the Migrant Mother series seems to accord with this mandate. The clothing, faces, and postures depict the mother and children as ragged, broke, uneasy, resigned. Nobody departs from this profile. Nobody smiles. Only one photograph, 4 in the Library of Congress archive, depicts Florence Owen Thompson in a manner that looks unplanned rather than arranged.

The humanistic documentary genre that Strykers photographers began has not been without reappraisal during the past seventy years. With the Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange created an image that became iconic not only of the Depression years but of the genre itself. That photograph furthered the mandate that led to its creation beyond the dreams of any photographer of the time.

Observations about the Photograph
    The mood that the image conveys is really sad. It shows this young girl being placed on such a gloomy environment. The photograph has a dramatic composition, lighting which is fitting to the environment the young girl is living in. This is just one of the photographs that moves you in deep emotion and thought, which is basically one of the great things about photography. What we see is what we get, and provides us with a lot of theories that could happen on this particular still photo. As we can see here that the focus is on the girl and the background is her surroundings. The suns light aimed directly at the girl emphasizes its exposure on the main subject, the lighting here is just right not too overexposed to probably not create a wrong impression,  As such can be interpreted as a rather normal scene instead of a somewhat sad one. The effect of the lighting also created shadows of the other objects of the background. That explained or can be assumed as hope for this sad, or lonely or even bored girl. The environment in contrast seems that it is eclipsing the hope, stating that this is her reality on this current time and she may better live with it. 
The composition also of this photo has captured my attention, the particular camera angle on the girl as she was placed on the lower part of the frame added meaning to the image, as the subject looked more submissive and also more mysterious.

Based on my observation, it can be assumed that this girl or her family have none of any objects of leisure on their daily life, the absence of toy for example conveys the message that the girl here is living a tough life. Also we can see here on left part of the photograph, that there is a bunch of newspapers stacked up on the window, it can be interpreted that the family reads and monitoring the daily news. (Which in fact the photo taken here is part of the series of photographs taken by Lange about the Great Depression period.)

This photo can stir emotions, even making the viewers create their own perception on what may be the image portrays. It could be the truth, but it could be otherwise. The stillness of its nature only captures the moment but not the entire truth, much can be said if this was revealed as a motion picture, which can easily justify any assumptions. But all things said, the photography here is really wonderful, it has reached the photographers goal of capturing ones heart through images and expressed the nostalgia of the moment.