Rose of Sharon

The Steinbeck “Exodus story of Okies”, the Grapes of Wrath, features a rich assortment of characters which, transcribed in John Ford’s film treatment, are portrayed by “actors … submerged so completely that it looks and feels like a documentary film.” But before that Hollywood treatment, and even before Steinbeck wrote his epic novel, Horace Bristol took this and other compelling documentary images of American migrants in the 1930s. Steinbeck was engaged as essayist for a book based on these photographs that never came to light. Instead, the pictures helped inspire his fictional story, and it is not difficult to see how. The Rose of Sharon, Ma Joad, and Tom Joad shots, along with Retarded Man with Fanatic Sister, express immediate drama, with shadows, wind, grime, and a strange fixation on hands and arms conveying a highly visible kind of stoic tension.