The road to hard times

Early in his career as a photojournalist, Horace Bristol deflected the criticism of another, better-known artist by declaring humbly, "I'm just like a stonemason working on a cathedral." The analogy held true for him through the 1930s, '40s and '50s, as he chronicled everyday life and culture in the U.S. and Asia. He was a single-skilled individual, laboring toward something grand and affirming, a "Family of Man"-style humanism.

Dorothea Lange shared Bristol's humility but applied a more potent aesthetic sensibility to the task and exercised greater ambition to effect change. She understood keenly the power of photography to influence perception -- not just visually, but politically, sociologically, historically. "The camera," she once stated, "is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." And propaganda, she believed, was merely another word for something you believe in strongly.

The J. Paul Getty Museum recently opened a stirring pair of shows, drawn primarily from its collection, featuring the photographs of Bristol (1908-1997) and Lange (1895-1965). "About Life: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange" is the larger, a survey in 80 pictures, anchored by her searing documentation of migrant labor in the '30s. The Bristol show focuses on just one series of photographs, which covers some of the same turf as Lange's landmark, Depression-era work. Unlike hers, Bristol's work from this period did not constitute the core of his career.

Lange recorded concisely and eloquently the conditions of the Dust Bowl migration through the expressions and postures of laborers, the textures of their lives. Her image of a weary and pensive mother, her young children clinging to her like barnacles, has become an icon -- perhaps the icon -- of the era. Although none of Bristol's images attained that same iconic status, he, too, was instrumental in shaping our collective understanding of the period through his role in the creation of another landmark work of art from the period -- John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath."

This is the month that Californians are encouraged to read and discuss Steinbeck's book, as part of a statewide initiative by the California Council for the Humanities, in partnership with the California Center for the Book. The Lange and Bristol shows at the Getty provide a precious opportunity to confront the very faces that populate Steinbeck's tale.