I was looking at an image by Dorothea Lange, "White Angel Breadline."
"What is striking about White Angel Breadline is the elegant manner in which Lange has balanced the narrative of her image with its formal construction. Displaying a masterful ability to organize complex space, she focuses the viewer’s gaze on just one individual in the crowded pen of unemployed men lining up for food...As a number of art historians have pointed out, Lange achieved a brilliant balance between a collective portrait of humanity and one of an individual." This image reminds me how lonely and helpless one can feel despite being surrounded by others. The Great Depression, of course, affected the entire nation, but each indivdual inevitably had specific personal troubles and feeling alone amongst others is an extremely agonizing and dismal shroud of misery suffocates ones spirits. Lange's image speaks uniformly to each of the men in this image- to feel alone, drowning from one's negatively spiraling thoughts of despair- although focuses on one single subject which communicates (for me) the reinforcement of the feelings of isolation and hopelessness.
