I would talk a little bit about myself, before mentioning my job.” This works, and he finally establishes “a real connection with people,” though at first these relationships seem fairly superficial, a means for John to get what he wants.Īmong the friendships he establishes are with Cliff, the plucky young son of the above-mentioned offended father Dwayne Watson, a Black man with a wife and one small child (his two other children died of “dust pneumonia”) and, most notably, Betty Harrison, a pregnant widow to whom John becomes instantly attracted. He persuades a white family of four into posing for his camera, then asks if he could take another shot of just the young son: “I still need a photograph of orphaned children.” The father takes extreme umbrage at this: “So now we’re just actors in a play? Count me out!” John’s willingness to stage shots that are supposed to be caught-in-the-moment raises the subject of truth massaging as someone at FSA puts it: “The truth is there… it’s just arranged differently.” Here, de Jongh makes the point that, for better and for worse, the media has long interpreted and represented its own views, not always the cold hard truth.īut John realizes he needs to change his approach and over a few days develops a new strategy: “This time I’d approach subjects without my camera first. Nevertheless, he follows in his dad’s footsteps and travels to the heart of the troubled region, camera at the ready.Īt the start, John, somewhat of city slicker, is cluelessly insensitive to the locals, treating them more as anthropological specimens than people. John’s father was a famous photographer and John clearly resents him for having been a cold and downright abusive parent and husband. Photographers like John (as well as Dorothea Lange) were employed to document the lives of those struggling in order to publicize their plight to the American public in large-circulation magazines like Life. government agency operational from 1937-1946, tasked with mitigating rural poverty during the Great Depression. De Jongh’s narrative is gorgeously drawn, yet the historical aspects held my interest more so than the fictional story elements, largely due to characters that are presented more as archetypes than three-dimensional people.ĭe Jongh ’s protagonist is twenty-two year old John Clark, a white photographer hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a U.S. The story is set in the Oklahoma Panhandle, 1937, during the height of the Dust Bowl disaster (which extended from the southern regions of Montana and North Dakota all the way into Texas). Aimée de Jongh, translated by Christopher Bradleyĭutch cartoonist Aimée de Jongh describes Days of Sand as historical fiction, which is to say it’s grounded in fact but populated by fictional characters.
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