DAY 10

SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Families

ROLE OF MOTHER

Migrant Mother captures the weariness, concern, and desperation of a woman caught in a personal plight that affects her family and their future. Captured by Dorothea Lange in 1936 as part of the Farm Security Administration’s documentation of migrant workers during the Depression Era, the photograph is a time-tested icon of family as the core unit of society.

Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California, 1936 (Migrant Mother); Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34- 009058-C.

The central figure, a mother, is surrounded by her youngest children. The photograph is closely cropped, cutting off part of the figures and creating the visual illusion that the mother is actually more than herself, the whole of her responsibilities so large that they cannot be contained within the confines of the photograph. The use of a compact composition focuses the eye on the mother’s face and reveals a hidden determination and strength that is at once worthy of assistance and support.

Lange spoke about taking the photograph, in an article published in Popular Photography magazine in February 1960, noting that only five photos were taken as she walked closer to the mother. —MLR