James Sawders

The tall, brightly lit silo in James Sawders photograph distracts from the farmer in the lower left-hand corner who is shoveling grain into the structure. The photograph was taken at just the right moment so that the slow shutter speed would blur the movement of the grain and not the farmer himself. This photograph was taken in North Dakota in 1930, just at the beginning of the Great Depression. The image is a stark contrast to the sympathetic photographs taken by the Farm Security Administration photographers of sharecroppers enduring the effects of the Dust Bowl Era. The small scale of the famer compared with the silo and the lack of identity given to this individual suggests that the image is more about the formal properties of the photograph and the subject of farming as a whole rather than presenting the story of an individual.