Pendant l'inondation à Louisville

“ So you ask me to expose you the feelings I’ve had when I took my photograph entitled “At the time of the Louisville Flood”…

I remember when I went to Louisville, Kentucky, on demand of the Farm Security Administration, which was an organization founded in the framework of the New Deal, in order to help the destitute farmers. The New Deal was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s economic program between 1933 and 1936 in response to the Great Depression and the huge economic crisis.

It was in winter, and the weather was very cold. I saw these Afro-American people in dire-straits lining up in front of the Red Cross. They were waiting to be given some foods and drinkable water because of the flood. This natural catastrophe had reinforced their extreme poverty owed to the loss of their jobs or to the prices increase.

Immediately, the advertisement over them had caught my eyes. On this large poster, I could see a perfect American family in a luxury car. They looked happy and smart. The slogan read “There is no way like the American way” and “World’s highest standard of living”.

There was a sharp contrast between the two scenes : the poverty-stricken black people on one side, and on the other side this ideal white family who can go on a journey and afford a car, a pet, and beautiful clothes, an opposition between the tragic reality and the ideal expectations. So I had thought, and I still think now that my photographer’s mission is to sensibilize the public opinion, especially the haves, to economic problems that strike many people in the whole world and in theirs cities too. Furthermore, we can notice the majority of poor people are blacks: so we can guess they were discriminated. With this ironic picture, I have wanted to debunk the American Dream and the blind veneration of America as a land of opportunities for everyone, where you can get rich from scratch and be integrated very fast.”

Margaret Bourke-White.

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