Many people have seen the picture entitled, Migrant Mother, and have no idea what it really is. The picture clearly depicts a woman in great grief and desperation, with two children at her sides and an infant in her lap. This picture was take in 1936, after the Great Depression had sunk in and infected the world. The photo is of Florence Owens Thompson. She was working on a pea farm, trying to support her family which included her and seven children. Of the about 2,500 workers on the camp, families were packed into either tents or lean-tos. The family of the picture in Migrant Mother lived in a lean-to. There was no reasonable work on the farm for all of the vegetables had frozen over.The photographer of this photo was Dorothea Lange. She was working on a large group project, trying to get pictures of migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. She was on her way back from her assignment when she saw a beaten sign which read, “Pea Farm.” She knew she did not want to question what was there if she did not turn back, so she did. The camp was full of starving families living in tent whom were basically out of work. Lange took six pictures of there of Thompson. They were the only six pictures that she would take that day. Lange gave this description of what she saw at the camp,“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 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 from her 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. There was a sort of equality about it.”When Lange returned from her trip she presented her picture to the editor of the San Francisco newspaper. The picture was published with an article and the federal athorities were informed. Because of this the government rushed a shipment of 20,000 pounds of food to the camp.The picture is a famous icon of what times were like during the time of The Great Depression. To have a picture around like this is great. It can really show the great sorrow of this era. People can tell you how horrible things were, but once you see something like this you can really tell how bad things were. Like they say, a picture can say a thousand words.
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