Hispanic woman at Trampas, New Mexico, by John Collier Jr

Every week I receive by email the Internet Scout Report, which is a review of educational sites from all over the USA. If you are interested, click here

One of the recent reviews mentioned a site called The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. - If you are interested, click here. An excerpt of the report says the following: The heart of the collection is the photographs of John Collier Jr., who was hired by the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) during World War II to take photographs of day-to-day life in America.

So the photographs have an ethnographic value. The photographs are divided into sections like religion, work, family, food, New Mexico, etc.
I enjoyed very much browsing through all these photos. Some of them are really interesting from a historic point of view, others for the special atmosphere that was characteristic for that period, and a few of them are heartbreaking portraits.

This one is a masterpiece. They call it 'Hispanic Woman at Trampas'. Well, anthropologically viewed, nothing to argue about. One could also call Mona Lisa 'Italian Woman of the Renaissance Period'. But here no elegant dress, no charming pause, no picturesque background, and above all, no half-smile. Omygawd, I wouldn't like to argue with that woman! What a character! Let's be grateful to John Collier that he did not ask her to look at the camera, I would have fainted if I had to stand under such a tense (and intense) gaze. The lips are stuck in an eloquent silence. Half of the face is in the shadow, which increases the inner drama of this person. The very modest collarette and the specked, ample dress surround hermetically the body just like the lips prohibit any word to be uttered.

But she is erect, gazing away, probably in her past, sitting on a worn-out chair, she is magnificent in her solitude and beautiful in her being. More than a hispanic woman, she is a Lady, a Doña.

BTW, over the same WWII period, and maybe in the same spirit, Ansel Adams took pictures at a 'relocation camp for japanese people' in Manzanar, on behalf of some governmental body. If you are interested, click here.