This is a photograph taken by Russell Lee in Iowa in 1936. The
image shows children crowded around a table in a small shack eating Christmas
Dinner. I chose this image because it shows how the extreme poverty caused by
the great depression meant that the children hardly had enough money and food
for Christmas.
The image raises a lot of questions, such as where are the
parents in the image and why are there empty chairs in the image. Many
questions are answered in an article from Sioux city journal, where Helen
Pauley Hopkins who is the child closest to the camera in the picture, is
tracked down later in life and asked about the photograph.
In the article, Helen explains that her family barely had
enough food and money to get by and as soon as they could the children found
work. She talks about how she and her siblings used to wait for their father to
return home from work each day to eat with him as a family. Looking back on her
childhood retrospectively she realises that her parents went without regularly
to make sure that the children ate well and had enough to survive in the
depression. She also explains that she lost two siblings during the depression,
one as a baby and one before the age of four. This could be why the parents put
so much effort into making sure that the others had enough.
The image was probably taken without the parents in frame to
focus on the struggle of children at the time, which is partially why the photo
hits so hard. The conditions that the children are living in is equivalent to
the hardships faced by many in modern day slums and the fact that this was
taken in America less than a century ago shows just how hard hitting the crash
was.
This also shows that the idea of the American Dream was stopped dead in its tracks by the Great Depression and instead of trying to achieve the perfect life for them and their families, many Americans were just living each day as it came in hopes of survival.
This also shows that the idea of the American Dream was stopped dead in its tracks by the Great Depression and instead of trying to achieve the perfect life for them and their families, many Americans were just living each day as it came in hopes of survival.
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