Migrant Mother
Publisher: Museum of Modern Art
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 48
ISBN-13: 9781633450660
Subjects: Documentary photography; Portrait photography; Depressions, 1929
Description: The US was in the midst of the Depression when Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) began documenting its impact through depictions of unemployed men on the streets of San Francisco. Her success won the attention of Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration), and in 1935 she started photographing the rural poor under its auspices. One day in Nipomo, California, Lange recalled, she "saw and approached [a] hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet." The woman's name was Florence Owens Thompson, and the result of their encounter was seven exposures, including "Migrant Mother." Curator Sarah Meister's essay provides a fresh context for this iconic work.