3/20: Dorothea Lange, Migrant
Mother
In the wake of the Great
Depression, economist Roy Stryker of the FSA (Federal Farm Security
Administration) hired photographers to capture the anguish and suffering felt by
the impoverished across America. Among
them was Dorothea Lange, a new college grad from Columbia who had set her
sights on photographing life “on the streets”.
In February of 1936, Lange was in Nipomo, California taking pictures of
poor migrant workers when she stumbled across a worn-looking mother with her
children. Lange immediately took 6 separate
images of her and her family over a span of ten minutes. The woman’s name was Florence Owens Thompson,
and she, along with her children, were looking for work picking in the fields. Accounts
claim she was a mother of three, but she actually had had seven children by the
time the photographs were taken. Other
sources claim that Lange treated Thompson with empathy and respect, but
Thompson herself said in an interview that Lange had promised the photos would
never be published, as they were an extremely private moment in a time of
anguish for her and her family. Either
way, the photo became perhaps the iconic photo of the Depression, inspiring
many to lend aid and support while helping to establish Lange’s reputation as
the first “documentary” photographer.
She claimed that documentary photographs contain an element that an
artist can respond to, which is well shown in each photograph. Most of the photographs have the children
either looking away or in the background, bringing Thompson’s face to the
foreground and creating emphasis on her and her situation. The emotion she captured was one of
suffering, which, while perhaps unwarranted, stimulated a movement that
ultimately connected people to one another like never before.
Information about the photo itself:
Learn more about Florence and her life before as well as
after:
How the photo was used as propaganda:
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