Drought refugees from Oklahoma camping by the roadside, Blythe, California 17 - 1936

Dorothea Lange captured this image of drought refugees from Oklahoma camping by the roadside in Blythe, California. Look at the man’s hand. Lange focuses on it, foregrounds it. It becomes a language of its own. The gesture of the hand, the colour, the surface—it’s a tool to make meaning. Imagine Lange, under the scorching sun, circling this family. She composes the shot and thinks about how she wants to tell this story. How she can reflect back the dignity and hope of the figures in the frame. Her work is a form of witnessing, a conversation with reality. I guess photography is not so different from painting! It’s just another way of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world. The humanity in this picture reminds us that we’re all in this human experiment together.