All we know about the woman in this photograph is that she was 80 years old in November, 1936, when Dorothea Lange took her picture, and at the time she was living in a camp for migrant workers outside Bakersfield, California.
If we think of her in the context of the times, we can deduce that she and her family were probably among the thousands of farmers forced to migrate from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California in search of work. This would mean that she had been enduring dislocation and acute poverty for some time.
Yet the old woman’s look is strong and her demeanor is positive. The shadow from the hand that shields her eyes from the bright sunlight obscures much of her face, but we can see enough to know that she is looking straight ahead and determined to keeping moving forward.
We live in a world where change is constant, and yet we make little space in our lives for dealing with it. Even the most painful and significant events get swallowed up in our culture’s pervasive impetus to move on. Retirement, the loss of a job, a major illness, the death of a spouse or partner, the limitations of aging—these are but a few of the major transitions in our lives. They are also opportunities for growth.
