Poverty-Migrant Mother

Dorothea Lange Photograph of migrant mother and children during the great depression of the 1930's

This is an excerpt from "The Story Of The 'Migrant Mother'", an article on Dorothea Lange's photograph "Migrant Mother". The photo was taken during the Great Depression the 1930s in Nipomo, California of a mother and two of her seven children shown hiding behind their mother for protection. 

"Lange one day found herself in Nipomo, California, at a campsite full of out-of-work pea pickers. The crop had been destroyed by freezing rain; there was nothing to pick. Lange approached one of the idle pickers, a woman sitting in a tent, surrounded by her seven children, and asked if she could photograph them. From Lange's notes:

I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that [she and her children] had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/kansascity_201307F03.html

I personally love this photograph for the mother. She sits with nothing but her children and a heavily puzzled look on her face yet still steadies the children and gives them love and protection every child needs. She is their rock and this photo captures it beautifully. 

Corinne Heeb