She was motivated to try to get changes to occur. There are five versions in the Library's collection of the desperate woman shielding her children, because Lange shot several exposures from different distances and angles. This was a characteristic way Lange earned the confidence of her subjects, Ms. Brannan said. She was good at establishing a friendly atmosphere, and over time they would just forget she was there. Parks was quoted in Documenting America explaining his artistic approach to photography as his best strategy for fighting racism.
Bigots have a way of looking just like everybody else.
His famous photograph, an ironic reflection of Grant Wood's American Gothic, was taken in the FSA's office. The woman in the photograph is Ella Watson, the building's charwoman. Posed stoically with a mop and a broom before the American flag, Watson represents the people who didn't achieve the American Dream. The coming war shifted the agency's mission. Stryker began assigning defense-related stories to his photographers in 1940, and when the photographic unit was moved to the Office of War Information in 1942, this emphasis prevailed.