Migrant Mother
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Date: March 1936
Location: Nipomo, California, USA
Dorothea Lange photographed Florence Owens Thompson and her children at a migrant pea-pickers camp in Nipomo, California, in March 1936, while working for the Farm Security Administration. Thompson, a 32-year-old mother of seven, had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. Lange made six exposures, moving closer with each frame. The final image — Thompson with two of her children turning their faces away from the camera and a baby in her lap — was published in San Francisco newspapers and triggered a government emergency response: 20,000 pounds of food was sent to the camp. The photograph became the iconic symbol of the Great Depression and of government documentary photography. Thompson, who was part Cherokee, reportedly had mixed feelings about the photograph's fame, as she felt she received no benefit from its widespread use. She died in 1983.
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