AGI Studio One - Week 9 - Related Works

By Tom Nickeas

Dust Bowl Artworks - Various Artists - c.1933 - 1939

This week I didn't look at one specific work, but rather a variety of artworks depicting the Dust Bowl era of America as witnessed by the artists. The script I have written is heavily inspired by this period in American history, drawing on both the ecological disaster, and human crisis experienced as part of the great depression.

These artworks vary in medium but all attempt to depict the overwhelming nature and presence of the dust and dust clouds. These force of nature is depicted as dark, as a bringer of death. Suprisingly it seems to be presented sometimes in a quite a surreal fashion, as though reflecting the artists own inability to fathom the reality of both the phenomena as well as the situation.

The artworks are important in communicating how this disasterous world felt for the people witnessing it, and living through it, at the time by giving us their subconscious and artistic image of it.

Various Photographic Works - Dorothea Lange - 1934-1937

These photographs of people were taken by Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era of the mid to late 1930s from various parts of America.

As opposed to the artworks above which depict the surreal and ominous nature of the dust itself, these photographs by Dorothea Lange document more closely the human side of this tragic period. They provide a small window into the lives and emotions of the people who lived, and attempted the long, often deadly, migratory journey across the desolate waste towards california.