"Are you comfortable now?"

Dorothea Lange, Nipomo, California. February 1936.

To zdjęcie autorstwa Dorothei Lange jest powszechnie znane. Przy tworzeniu tekstów na temat „Matki tułaczki” zużyto hektolitry atramentu i kilometry taśmy do maszyn do pisania, nie mówiąc już o samym papierze*. Pod koniec lat 70. ubiegłego wieku odnaleziono bohaterkę tej fotografii - okazała się nią być pani Florence Thompson. Udzieliła ona wtedy krótkiego wywiadu, który ze strony http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/ wklejam poniżej. Myślę, że jej słowa to niezbędny komentarz, nie tylko do zdjęć Lange oraz jej kolegów z ekipy F.S.A., ale też tych wszystkich fotografów eksplorujących „amerykańskie powierzchnie” (by nawiązać do tytułu wczesnej serii Stephena Shore’a).

      "I left Oklahoma in 1925 and went to Oroville [California]. That's where them three girls' dad [Cleo] died, in Oroville, 1931. And I was 28 years old [in 1931], and I had five kids and that one [the baby in this photo, Norma] was on the road. She never even saw her daddy. She was born after he died. It was very hard. And cheap. I picked cotton in Firebaugh, when that girl there was about two years old, I picked cotton in Firebaugh for 50-cents a hundred."
     Question: "A 'hundred' [meaning] weight?"
     "A hundred pounds." **
     Question: "How much could you pick in a day, then?"
     "I generally picked around 450, 500. I didn't even weigh a hundred pounds. I lived down there in Shafter, and I'd leave home before daylight and come in after dark. We just existed! Anyway, we lived. We survived, let's put it that way. I walked from what they called a Hoover camp ground right there at the bridge [in Bakersfield], I walked from there to way down on First Street, and worked at a penny a dish down there for 50-cents a day and the leftovers. Yeah, they give me what was leftover to take home with me. Sometimes, I'd carry home two water buckets full.
     "Well, [in 1936] we started from L.A. to Watsonville. And the timing chain broke on my car. And I had a guy to pull into this pea camp in Nipomo. I started to cook dinner for my kids, and all the little kids around the camp came in. 'Can I have a bite? Can I have a bite?' And they was hungry, them people was. And I got my car fixed, and I was just getting ready to pull out when she [Dorothea Lange] come back and snapped my picture.

      "I come to this town [Modesto] in 1945. I transferred from Whittier State to Modesto. And when this hospital opened up out here, I went to work there. And the first eight years I lived in this town, I worked 16 hours out of 24. Eight-and-a-half years, seven days a week."
     Question: "Are you comfortable now?"
     "Yeah."

Dorothea Lange, Nipomo, California. February 1936.

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* W Polsce o kulisach wykonania tego zdjecia (w wersji podanej przez jego autorkę), pisał w pierwszej połowie lat 60. XX w. miesięcznik "Fotografia" w dużym artykule, który był poświęcony sylwetce Dorothei Lange.

** Miara wagi stosowana m.in. w U.S.A. oraz Wielkiej Brytanii. 1 pound (funt), to dokładnie 453.59237 gramów.