Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and The Culture of The Great Depression
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and The Culture of The Great Depression
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and The Culture of The Great Depression
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Great Depression
James C. Curtis
N A COLD, RAINY AFTERNOON in
Riess,
1960 (Berkeley: Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft
Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood, In This
Proud
Library, University of California, 1968), p. 245. If this was the
Land: America, 1935-1943, as Seen in the FSA Photographs
exact
quotation that Lange pinned to her darkroom door it was
(Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973),
p. 19.
a loose translation of section 129 in Bacon's Novum Organum.
? 1986 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Most translators agree that the wording of the second line
All rights reserved. 0084-0416/86/2101-0ooo $02.00
should be "Without superstition or imposture" (emphasis added).
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Winterthur Portfolio
reach a larger audience, thereby gaining recognition for herself and for the cause of her subjects.
contemporaries in terms that they would under- Although experiencing the early stages of a
communications revolution, depression America
stand. While not inventions, the exposures Lange
took on that chilly and damp March afternoonwas
re-not yet saturated with images. Motion pictures
exerted an enormous influence on popular culveal more about the photographer and her audi-
ence than about the life of Migrant Mother. ture, creating at once an interest in visual arts and
an acceptance of contemporary events as appropriThis is not to argue that Lange broke faith with
ployee of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Created in 1935, RA
adhered to
but one that is more relevant to the debate on the nature of the
documentary method.
4 For a basic definition of the theory and practice of documentary photography, see William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973). For a reappraisal that concentrates on Walker Evans, see
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having previously done some commercial photography for the Museum of Modern Art. Known for
the purity of his technique and the directness of his
documentary styling, Evans had little prior exposure to rural poverty. Arthur Rothstein, a former
chemistry student at Columbia, had mastered the
Although forced to scale down his budget, Stryker never relinquished his dream of a centralized
photographic project that would produce a com-
Evans and Lange asked to keep their own negatives; Stryker refused. Their images became part
of his file, and "the file" soon became the major
justification for continuing the project. "I am really
quite disturbed over the inability to convince our
superiors of the necessity of keeping up a definite
momentum in this photographic work," he wrote
done."7 Four years later the FSA file had quadrupled, and still Stryker was not satisfied. He
passed along these frustrations to his photog-
she wrote to Stryker after one grueling assignment. She "encountered dust, blowing sand, and
the beginning. He could barely equip three photographers, let alone thirty. Unsympathetic supervisors questioned the expenditure of funds on film
ugees including Migrant Mother, see Bill Ganzel, Dust Bowl Descent (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984).
file.
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Winterthur Portfolio
your cameras out in the rain you are just asking for
trouble." "Almost without realizing" what she was
doing, Lange turned around and drove back to the
her subjects with each shot. She did not ask the
woman's "name or her history." Nor did she "approach the tents and shelters of other pea-pickers.
It was not necessary." She knew that she "had recorded the essence of [her] assignment."9
This brief encounter was typical of Stryker's
project; his photographers were constantly on the
move. They were required to cover as much territory as possible and rarely remained in one location for more than a day at a time. Lange and her
colleagues became transients themselves, working
out of the backs of their vehicles, traveling to un-
Had Lange been at the beginning of an assignment instead of at the end that day in March, she
might have stayed hours at the pea-pickers camp
instead of minutes, but only to take more pictures,
not to achieve greater intimacy. Migrant Mother
remained nameless by design, not oversight. Stry-
9 Dorothea Lange, "The Assignment I'll Never Forget: Migrant Mother," Popular Photography 46, no. 2 (February 1960):
42-43, 128.
matter. Internal evidence in each provides important information on Lange's choice of symbolism
and the values she sought to communicate.12 As a
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Californian" and thus even more deserving of relief funds than a newly arrived "Okie," she probed
her car. By comparison with the five known exposures, it is a rather chaotic image, lacking control
comfortably into Lange's viewfinder (fig. 3). Migrant Mother looks toward the camera, as do her
younger daughters, who stand, somewhat stiffly, to.
her right. The teenage girl poses in a stylized fash-
five exposures," not six. O'Neal, Vision Shared, p. 76, locates the
sixth photograph in the Oakland Museum but does not publish
it. Heyman, Celebrating a Collection, n.p., refers to the series as
consisting of six photographs but reproduces only four. Coles,
Lange (put out in part by the Oakland Museum), p. 20, refers to
the series as having only five photographs. That book publishes
meager repast a bleak commentary on the onceproud ideal of rural self-sufficiency. Lee took another picture inside that cabin, showing the father
at his traditional place; significantly, that image has
rarely been published (fig. 5).15 By way of extension, Lange's famous portrait of a drought refugee
family in which the focus is solely on the defiant
wife nursing her child (fig. 6) is usually preferred
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Winterthur Portfolio
Fig. 2. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calif., March 1936. From Paul S.
Taylor, "Migrant Mother: 1936," American West 7, no. 3 (May 1970): 44.
Fig. 3. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calif., March 1936. (Farm Security
Administration, Library of Congress.)
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Fig. 5. Russell Lee, Christmas dinner, Smithland, Iowa, vicinity, December 1936. (Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.)
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Winterthur Portfolio
Congress.)
that weighed most heavily on public policy decisions, the ideal family contained no more than
out."17
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Dorothea was twenty-five; her husband was twenty middle-class viewers were sympathetically disposed
years her senior, recently divorced, and father of a to the needs of impoverished children, teenagers
teenage girl. The couple waited nearly five years posed thorny questions of personal responsibility.
before having their first child. A second son was
Lange herself was fresh from several searing batborn in 1928 when Dorothea was thirty-three years tles with her ex-husband's resentful daughter.
old. Although Lange apparently tried to create the
Lange's third photograph eliminated the teenstable home life that she had lacked as a child, she ager. For this, Lange moved closer to the tent,
was unsuccessful. Lange was never accepted by her focusing on the powerful bond between the
stepdaughter with whom she had several violent mother and her infant. Apparently she asked the
fights. She curtailed her studio work and arranged two small children to step aside so that she could
child care for her sons in order to accompany May- feature the act of breast-feeding (fig. 7). Since
nard on his periodic artistic retreats to the desert neither of the first two photographs shows Migrant
Southwest. Despite such sacrifices, or perhaps beMother nursing her child, it is possible that the
moved confidently in arranging her compositions. sas (1928), Thomas Hart Benton's Susannah and the
She knew the image that she wanted, what to fea- Elders (1938), and John McGrady's Swing Low Sweet
ture and what to leave out. Although focusing on
Chariot (1937) explicitly invoked spiritual themes,
the family and shaping it to manageable size, the
while Doris Lee's Thanksgiving Dinner (1934) and
two long shots contained unwanted elements. Joe Corbino's Flood Refugees (1938) dealt indirectly
Technically the teenage daughter was almost old with the primacy of faith in contemporary Amerienough to be self-sufficient. Her presence in the
can culture. Exemplifying this reverential aspect of
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Winterthur Portfolio
10
Fig. 7. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calif., March 1936. (Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.)
American art, Lange's composition employed fundamental and historic religious symbolism.18
Long a popular image in Western religious art,
themes in American culture during the Great Depression, offering citizens convenient remedies for
the sense of guilt and shame they felt as a result of
Scene: American Painting in the I930s (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974); Nancy Heller and Julia Williams, The Regionalists
(New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1976); Wanda Corn,
Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1983); and Joseph S. Czestochowski, John Steuart Curry
and Grant Wood: A Portrait of Rural America (Columbia: Univer-
19 Maria Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult
of the Virgin Mary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 223
203. This is the most sensitive of the many works concerning
the image of the Madonna in art and literature.
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11
flaw in her composition. She had captured an intimate moment in Migrant Mother's life, one rich
with symbolic potential, yet the woman's facial expression, the key ingredient in a revealing portrait,
was all wrong. Migrant Mother looked downward,
as if wishing to shield herself from the scrutiny of
the camera. Lange knew this defense mechanism,
having used it herself as a teenager in the streets of
monplace emotions. Poverty was a distressing matter, they believed, not an embarrassing one. Such
an outlook caused them to discourage the conventional smile as well. Evans's portrait of Floyd Burroughs compels attention because of the apparent
New York: "If I don't want anybody to see me," cut the message Evans sought to convey. Anger
was nearly as subversive as contentment. When
Lange and Taylor published their story of the migrants, American Exodus (1939), they included only
their caption explained that the man was not viopresent them as dignified human beings whose lent and certainly was no radical.21
Had Lange been able to elicit a more expressive
plight would elicit sympathy, not ridicule. To this
end they tended to avoid recording certain comfacial gesture, one indicative of sorrow or anxiety,
20 Lange, Making of a Photographer, p. 16.
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12
Winterthur Portfolio
reserve.
were If
now
acceptable, but Lange decide
ited experience making children'sdaughter
portraits.
she
she could
better.
She repeated the compositi
spent time taking pictures of her
two do
sons,
she
with critical
modifications.
Lange moved slightly
chose not to exhibit these images
in her
own
her left andin
switched
a horizontal to a vertical
lifetime, and only a few have appeared
the from
sevformat.
This allowed
her to center her subjects in
eral biographies published since her
death
in 1965.
the frame, give
them ample headroom, and preHer previous photographs of California's
migrants
them against the backdrop of the tent canvas
concentrated on adults and their sent
problems.
(fig. 11).children
The tent post
Despite her lack of experience with
asno longer obscured part of
thefew
infant's
head. This
models, Lange managed in the next
minutes
tonew perspective also enLange
to eliminate
elicit the complete cooperation ofabled
her
young
sub- the piles of dirty clothes
Fig. lo. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calif., March 1936. (Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.)
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13
so visible in her third composition. Given the option, she preferred to excise such details and the
frame provided clear evidence that this was a family on the move, forced by circumstances to leave
home and to take to the road.
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14
Winterthur Portfolio
The arrangement succeeded brilliantly, combining and enriching the religious and familial
themes that Lange had pursued from the outset of
the series. Her composition could easily fit into a
long-standing tradition in Western art where the
rary American attitudes on family bonding. During the early twentieth century, Americans had
feared that the twin pressures of industrialization
and urban growth had altered traditional family
structure. They mourned the disappearance of the
her lap; the object could hardly have fallen forward unless
there was a strong wind that would have disturbed the clothing
of subjects; the shadow detail indicates that the object is in motion and about to hit the ground; the object is about the size of a
film holder; while Lange is taking the picture head on, she still
might have used a cable release, allowing her to step aside and
toss the object into the picture; or an assistant (Lange frequently
object while Lange stood ready to time her shutter release. The
alternate view of this scene is not in the Library of Congress but
American family could not survive the rude transplantation from an agrarian to an urban setting.
If the city had its critics, it also had defenders.
The field of sociology sprang primarily from urban universities like Columbia and Chicago. Sociologists regarded the city as a laboratory. Their re-
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Fig. 12. Dorothea Lange, Toward Los Angeles, Calif., March 1937. (Farm Security Administration, Library of
Congress.)
Fig. 13. Dorothea Lange, family bound for Krebs from Idabel, Okla., 1939. (Farm Security Administration,
Library of Congress.)
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15
16
Winterthur Portfolio
self as an urban professional, then by documenting San Francisco's problems, and finally by car-
countryside.
mality is also the hallmark of Grant Wood's American Gothic (1932), easily the most famous painting
to emerge from the regionalist reaffirmation of
rural traditions.
Whether affection or authoritarianism governed Lange's upbringing and early family rela-
know we aren't the kissing kind," and then embraces him stiffly. Hollywood scriptwriters concocted this tender scene; in the novel, the parting is
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17
crowd of strikers (fig. 17). The power of the constabulary is evident from the repose of the folded
hands against the man's uniform with its gleaming
buttons and badge. What makes this presumption
alter this arrangement for fear that the child mightMother series (fig. 15) was not such a moment.
in aan effort to create the type of portrait her sensithat the mother's facial expression was the key to
bility perceived. The hand framing the face, callpowerful photograph. Lange moved closer, hoping that her subject would cooperate in one finaling attention to Migrant Mother's feelings, break-
an injury that she felt had left her a "semiof competing countenances and any exchanged
glances that might produce unwanted effects. Shecripple."27 By wearing pants and by bringing her
claimed documentary images feature details simi-ment that escaped the photographer's attention in
the field but that later in the darkroom would
lar to the gesture that Lange was incorporating in
the final frame of the series. White Angel Breadline
emerge as a "glaring defect." In bringing her rig
(1933) shows an unemployed male, in the midst ofhand to her face, Migrant Mother apparentl
a relief crowd, leaning on a wooden railing, his
feared that she would lose support for her sleepi
arms encircling an empty tin cup (fig. 16). Theinfant, and so she reached out with her left hand
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pp. 17-18.
Winterthur Portfolio
Fig. 15. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, Calif., March 1936. (Farm Security Administration, Library of
Congress.)
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19
only "the chance visit of a government photographer" had led to the immediate dispatch of relief
102, 251
from Roy Stryker, Lange directed a darkroom
as-n. 18.
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Winterthur Portfolio
20
more than fifty miles from the pea fields where she
sat in front of a lean-to and where chance had
graphs.
Like Lange, who died in 1965, Thompso
made. Aesthetic liability though it proved to
be,
had cancer; she had just been rendered speechless
this gesture gave clear evidence that Migrant
byof
a stroke. Thompson's children pleaded for
Mother's highest priority remained the support
funds to defray their mother's medical expenses,
her family and that posing for a government
as she had no insurance. Within weeks contribuphotographer was a secondary concern.
For nearly half a century Migrant Mother tions
re- totaled nearly thirty thousand dollars. In mid
Florence Thompson died.29
mained a powerful but anonymous symbol of September,
the
sufferings and fortitude engendered by the Great
Depression. In the summer of 1983, the photograph appeared again in the national press, this
29 New York Times (August 24, September 17, 1983); Los
Angeles Times (September 17, 1983).
time to benefit Migrant Mother herself, Florence
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