Picturing the Migrant Father of the Dust Bowl

Abstract

In the most iconic image of the 1930s American Dust Bowl—Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother—one figure is conspicuously absent: the father, the male figure in the family unit. The same can be said for our historical understanding of the Great Plains Dust Bowl, whereby an analysis of the role of manhood and masculinity, of the representation of men during an anthropogenic environmental disaster is largely lacking. In this paper I examine how men and patterns of gender at large were represented during the Dust Bowl through analysing the photographs of the federal Farm Security Administration (FSA).

Keywords

• masculinity
• gender
• environment
• photography
• migration