I have been obsessed with pictures of the Dust Bowl era (also known as ‘the Dirty Thirties’) during the Great Depression, ever since I read musician Woody Guthrie‘s autobiography “Bound for Glory” and listened over and over again to his album Dust Bowl Ballads, admiring his political slogan-scrawled geetar’ which boldly stated: “this machine kills fascists”.
For those who aren’t familiar with Woody Guthrie: he was a musical hero, clearly, a figurehead in the folk movement and influencing the likes of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. But throughout his life he was a victim of much hardship, misfortune and torment.
My curiosity of the Dust Bowl soon led me to discover many of my favorite images, especially those of Dorothea Lange,
who was one of the many artists realised, as a result of the documentation of this stretch of misfortune and economic crisis intensified by this natural disaster catastrophe.
Onward continues my romantic obsession with the beauty and darkness of these Black Blizzards
this time and place on the earth, unfolding into the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma.. a dark and twisted tale of despair and depression. There is something hugely magnetic about all those old, haunting images.. capturing a sort of post-apocalyptic quality and serenity in destruction which I feel I am hunting for when I look for beauty.
I find myself, over the years, never failing to gather inspiration from them, going back to them.. over and over again..
