Dispossessed Arkansas farmers. These people are resettling themselves on the dump outside of Bakersfield, California 1935

Dorothea Lange made this photograph of dispossessed Arkansas farmers resettling on a dump outside of Bakersfield, California. What hits me first is the composition, how the woman’s face is framed by these rough-hewn planks, almost like she’s peering out from behind bars. I wonder what Lange was thinking when she framed the shot this way. Did she want to convey a sense of confinement, of being trapped by circumstance? The texture of the photograph itself is striking – the graininess of the film, the contrast between light and shadow, create this palpable sense of grit and hardship. You can almost feel the dust and the heat, the weight of the Depression bearing down on these people. There's an honesty here, a refusal to pretty things up. It reminds me of the raw, unflinching approach of someone like Käthe Kollwitz, who also sought to capture the human cost of poverty and war. Lange and Kollwitz's works remind us that art can be a powerful tool for empathy and social change.