The Migrant Mother

The Migrant Mother

Migrant Mother - Dorothea Lange - c. 1936

Photographer Dorothea Lange took the infamous photos of the 'Migrant Mother'.  It was on a whim that she had happened to stop in Nipomo, California.  It was there that she met Florence Owen Thomsson and her seven children.  When the photo was taken, Lange had not asked her name or any history about her.  It was that moment that mattered most. They represented the Depression and the heartache a family had felt during that time.  Having nothing but the clothes on their back they still managed to live in very harsh conditions. 


“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five [actually six] exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires of the car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”


Soon after these photos were taken, Lange gave them to her employer at the Resettlement Administration in Washington, San Francisco News and the New Deal agenda.  The 'Migrant Mother' was the poster face of families during the Depression.


The Aftermath


A few years before her death in 1983, Florence Owen Thompson revealed her identity. In a letter to a local newspaper, the Modesto Bee, she stating her dismay about the iconic photograph. She felt exploited by it, never received a penny, and seemed hurt that the photographer never asked her name.


Katherine McIntosh was 4 years old when the photo was taken. She said it brought shame -- and determination -- to her family.  "The picture came out in the paper to show the people what hard times was. People was starving in that camp. There was no food," she says. "We were ashamed of it. We didn't want no one to know who we were."


It was nearly impossible to get an education. Children worked the fields with their parents. As soon as they'd get settled at a school, it was time to pick up and move again.

What was the role of Migrant Mother photograph in the period or great depression and what is it nowadays?

Just as certain photos we see in the media take on a specific meaning, so did this partticular photo.  This migrant mother became a symbol of the Great Depression and poor families.  The mother in the photo was having a hard time providing the basic necessity for her children. Florence Thompson is the poster face of all that went wrong during the Great Depression.  The Great Depression not only hit the cities but also the towns around it.  Almost everyone had to travel out of their way for employement and food.  That is why Florence Thompson is dubbed as 'migrant' because her husband was looking for employment at the time. 

Nowadays the photo is proof of the hard times that people suffered during the Great Depression.  Not only that but it is also a reminder that there are still mothers out there living in such dire conditions.  The photo is used in schools, colleges and univerities to teach about the Great Depression.  The years may have progressed but in the same manner has humanity? 

 Pictures of the Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

The Farm Security Administration - Office of War Info. Collection

Jack Delano c. May 1941

Why the FSA project had significant impact on the society?

Farm Security Administration was a project ceated in the Department of Agriculture in 1937. It was born out of frustration of the New Deal agriculture policy to provide help for the nation’s poorest farmers, at the time of the great depression. It was created in the United States of America providing a variety of support programs for the poor, rural farmers. The agency initially was known as the Resettlement Administration in 1935, headed by Rexford Tugwell. Rexford Tugwell was a U.S. economist, working for the economics faculty of Columbia University before becoming a member of the Brain Trust that advised Frankin D. Roosevelt.

The agency initially was known as the Resettlement Administration because of its primary function of moving farm families off of small, unproductive, unprofitable farms and resetting them in communities of similar farm families working large tracts of government-owned land, however the resettlement mission was abandoned in the late 1930s as a result of political opposition.

One of the lasting achievements by the Farm Security Administration was its image making. In its attempts to convince the public of the need for the agency’s mission, Rexfod Tugwell appointed a former student with the assignment of photographing the devastated land and people that were suffering due to the The Great Depression; in other words, gather photographs of the people who they were attempting to help out, in order to raise awareness. The assignment’s crew ended up taking roughly 270, 000 pictures, with some members gaining reputations as leading creators of documentary photography, namely: Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein and Ben Shahn.

The Office of War Information Collection was created in 1942 and served as a propaganda agency during World War II. It had two primary units of photography: one of which was headed by Roy Emerson Stryker and the other, the News Bureau. Though they were both used to document America’s mobilisation during the early years of World War II concentrating on topics such as aircraft factories and women in the work force. Roy Emerson Strykers section was one that had been transferred from the Farm Security Administration in late 1942, where he had already accomplished a world famous collection of documentary photographs.

The images retained an ability to remind us all of the hardships of rural America during the 1930’s. The color photographs of the Farm Security Administration and its predecessor Office of War Information Collection include scenes of rural and small-town life, migrant labor, and the effects of the Great Depression. A significant number of the color photographs concern the mobilization effort for World War II and portray aircraft manufacturing, military training, and the nation's railroads. The 1,600 color photographs produced by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information Collection photographers are less well known and far less extensive than the 164,000 black-and-white photographs in the collection.

A Few Photos:

Marion Post Wolcott, c. January 1939

Marion Post Wolcott, c. November 1939

Arthur Rothstein, c. 1936

Walker Evans, c. 1935 or 1936



Dorothea Lange, C. 1937


Links to FSA Collection:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/sets/72157610969038056/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html