What can companion images tell us?
History Matters
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/Photos/question4.html#alys
Most historians have based their interpretations of “Migrant Mother” on an article Lange wrote in
1960 in which she said that she spent a total of ten minutes with her subject during which time she
took five photographs, working closer with each shot. (Actually Lange took a total of six pictures that
day.)
The five companion photographs to “Migrant Mother” offer unmistakable evidence that Lange left
little to chance this cold and dreary afternoon in the pea fields of Nipomo, California in February,
1936. She used all her artistic skill and her considerable photographic experience to fashion the
dramatic final shot, although she neglected to engage with her subject sufficiently to learn her
name. She was so successful in this endeavor that “Migrant Mother” has long been regarded as an
unposed, candid photograph.
The first two photographs in the series show how quickly Lange took control of the scene and
directed the actions of her subjects. In her initial frame, Lange showed the migrant mother (later
scholars learned that her name was Florence Thompson) and her four children, the oldest of whom
sat in a rocking chair inside the tent.
In the second frame the teenage girl is outside the tent seated in the same chair. As cooperative as
the young woman had been, Lange excluded her from the remainder of the series. The photographer
made this decision after learning that the girl was not one of four but one of seven children in the
family and that her mother was only 32 years old. Lange understood that her middle-class, urban
audience would surely reject a photograph that provided such alarming evidence of a lack of family
planning during hard times. So the photographer concentrated on the three youngest children and in
the next four exposures experimented with several different arrangements, each designed to
underscore the themes of maternal nurture and sacrifice.
After taking an unsatisfying photograph of Thompson nursing her infant, Lange brought one of the
two younger girls back into the scene and worked with her in the next two frames. As posed by
Lange, the child demonstrates neediness as well as a determination to support her mother. The
trunk and empty pie tin in the foreground attest to the family’s itinerancy and struggle for survival.
From a compositional standpoint, this is the most evocative of the images in the series, but Lange
was still not satisfied. She wanted to find a way to penetrate the mother’s reserve. She brought the
other young daughter into the scene and posed both girls with their heads resting on their mother’s
shoulders. She then asked them to turn their faces away from the camera. When they complied,
Lange was free to focus on the mother’s countenance. She then employed a strategy drawn from her
studio experience. She asked Thompson to bring her right hand to her face. This gesture framed her
face and called attention to her feelings. In her excitement over the success of this strategy, Lange
overlooked the fact that her subject had reached out with her left hand and grabbed the tent post in
order not to lose support for her sleeping infant. Thompson’s thumb was visible in the lower right
portion of the frame, a detail that would drive Lange to distraction. When she was asked to exhibit
“Migrant Mother” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941, Lange had a darkroom assistant remove the
thumb.
Now the picture was as Lange had envisioned and would soon become emblematic of the suffering
occasioned by the Great Depression. As for the five companion images, they, like the teenage
daughter, were relegated to the shadows.
The Library of Congress >> Especially for Researchers >> Research Centers
Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm
Security Administration Collection: An Overview
The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that
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Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a
month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement
Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
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. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).
The images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film. It is not possible to
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determine on the basis of the negative numbers (which were assigned later at the Resettlement
Administration) the order in which the photographs were taken.
There are no known restrictions on the use of Lange's "Migrant Mother" images. A rights statement for
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the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information black-and-white negatives is available
online at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html.
Images in the series are as follows (select the small image to view larger versions through the Prints &
Photographs Online Catalog):
1.) Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9058-C (film negative)
Caption: "Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old
mother of seven children. February 1936." (retouched version)
Location: FSA/OWI - J339168 (the original photographic print
has been replaced by a copy print) (Also available on microfilm
and microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far
West fiche #29:E11.)
1a.) Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-95653 (film copy
negative)
Caption: "Destitute peapickers in California ..."
Location: LOT 997
Note: This is an unretouched version of the image listed in #1.
This version of the image shows a thumb in the immediate
foreground on the right side.
[jpeg image] [ tiff image ]
2.) Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9093-C (film negative)
Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural
worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the
father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp,
because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had
just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people
in this camp were destitute."
Location: FSA/OWI - J355. (Also available on microfilm and
microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far West
fiche #32:A-8.)
3.) Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9095 (film negative)
Caption: "Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven children
without food. Mother aged 32, father is a native Californian.
March 1936."
Location: FSA/OWI - J355. (Also available on microfilm and
microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far West
fiche #32:A-9.)
4.) Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9097-C (film negative)
Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural
worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32. Father
is a native Californian."
Location: FSA/OWI - J361. (Also available on microfilm and
microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far West
fiche #33:A-7.)
5.) Reproduction number: LC-USZ62-58355 (film copy
negative) (Note: Original negative was declared missing;
original negative number was: LC- USF34-9098-C.)
Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. March 1936. Migrant agricultural
worker's family. Seven hungry children and their mother, aged
32. The father is a native Californian."
Location: FSA/OWI - J355. (Also available on microfilm and
microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far West
fiche #32:A-10).
Note: A sixth image that shows the mother and children in the
tent, taken at a medium range and from an angle, was apparently
never received by the Library of Congress. It was featured in an
article by Lange's husband, Paul Taylor, in American West (May
1970) 7:44. A print of this image may be found in the Dorothea
Lange Archive, Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland,
CA, 94607.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Contemporary Publications in Which "Migrant Mother" Was Featured:
"Ragged, Hungry, Broke, Harvest Workers Live in Squaller." San Francisco News (March 10, 1936)
"What Does the 'New Deal' Mean to This Mother and Her Children?" San Francisco News (March 11,
1936).
Later Publications Discussing "Migrant Mother":
Curtis, James. Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1989. [LC Call #: TR820.5.C87 1989 (P&P)] (Another version of the chapter on Lange
was published as: Curtis, James C. "Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great
Depression." Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture (Spring 1986) 21:1-20.
Dunn, Geoffry. "The heart of a woman." Santa Maria Sun, vol. 2, no. 46 (Feb. 15, 2002).
Dunn, Geoffrey. "Photographic License." Metro: Santa Clara Valley's Weekly Newspaper, vol. 10 (Jan.
19-25, 1995): 20-24.
"Dust Bowl Update." Life (Aug. 1979): 9.
Foley, Jack. "'Migrant Mother' Now Lies Dying: Subject of Photo Racked by Cancer." San Jose Mercury
News (Aug. 21, 1983).
"A Haunting Symbol of the Depression Struggles for Her Life, Pleads For Help." Rochester, NY,
Democrat and Chronicle (Aug. 25, 1983).
Heyman, Therese T. Celebrating a Collection: the Work of Dorothea Lange. Oakland: Oakland Museum,
1978 [LC Call #: TR 647.L36 (P&P)]
Natanson, Barbara O. "Exploring Contexts: Migrant Mother" in American Women: A Gateway to Library
of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States. Web site:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/migrant_mother.html (accessed: March 15, 2004).
Sprague, Roger. Migrant Mother: The story as told by her Grandson. Web site:
http://www.migrantgrandson.com/ (accessed: March 15, 2004).
Taylor, Paul. "Migrant Mother: 1936." The American West: The Magazine of Western History. (May
1970): 41-47.
Picture
Migrant Mother - The
Her name was Florence, she was just 32 years old and had come from
Oklahoma to California some dozen years before, to a land of promise -- a promise
which, for her, had not been kept. On New Years eve, 1924 she had arrived, with
her husband Cleo Owens and her three children.
Her first house was in Shafter, California. Though it was small and poor, it
was as much as she had in Oklahoma. But this place and these times held a
promise of something more for her and her family. To own her own home, to raise
her kids and give them more than she had had, to live the American dream.
There was work in the mills and factories of California for Cleo. He was a frail man and light of build. A near
death fight with pneumonia, at age twenty-one, had left his lungs weak, making them a target for any germ that
happened along. His only excesses were a tendency to overwork himself to provide for his family, and his deep,
and intense love for Florence.
Cleo had married Florence over the objections of his own family, who all felt that Florence was too
headstrong. They all predicted that the marriage would fail, a bad sin in 1920. A wife was there to raise the kids and
do as she was told by her husband. Florence, in contrast, was only 17 when she informed Cleo's family that they
would never rule her or her kids. She loved Cleo, but she was who she was and that was that! (Cleo's people knew
that Florence was at least half Cherokee, but they did not know that she was Full blood Cherokee.)
In 1925 Florence and Cleo moved to Porterville, some fifty miles north of Shafter, where he and his brothers
had found good work at good wages in the sawmill. Then they moved again, this time to Oroville, to work in the mill
there. In 1927 there fourth child, a son was born. Later the same year the mill burnt and they had to move to a
small town in Merced County.
Merced Falls was then the county seat of Merced County; it sat on the eastern edge of the
San Joaquin valley, just barely in the foothills, and consisted only of five or six streets, one store
and one school. The people were kind and caring, but it was also a company town: anyone who
worked, worked for the mill, even the store keeper, for that too was owned by the mill. Life was
good, full and happy. In September of 1929, Florence gave birth to the fifth of her ten children, a
girl, Ruby. Soon after that happy event, however, another event 3,000 miles away sealed the fate
of the town, and a family.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was little noticed in Merced Falls; it's doubtful if anyone understood what it
would mean to their town. As the Great Depression moved across the land, little would remain as it had been.
Though the mill tried to hold on with small orders through 1938, for most of its workers the end came in '31. Cleo
was one of many to lose his job. There was no other work; all they could do was move on, to join that army of
people working the fields and orchards of California, the migrants.
MI-GRANT (mi'grant) adj. a person or animal that migrates. To go from one place to
another, repeatedly and in a large group, as certain types of birds. Migrant was the polite word;
most just called them Okies even though these "Okies" came from all over the Midwest,
Arkansas, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Some, like Cleo and Florence, had come early, before
the Dust Bowl, but most were coming now, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. In beatup old cars, trucks, anything that would move, they came. They lived in tent cities called
Hoovervilles (mocking the President many felt had brought on this Depression). If they were
lucky, they had that day's food, if they were rich; they had maybe five days' food. In years to come it would be said
of the migrants that "They had so little, but they always had enough to share with those that had less."
Cleo and Florence's first "migration" was back to Oroville in Northern California, where he joined his sisters
and brothers, who had left Merced Falls earlier to work in the fields.
After picking peaches all day, Cleo and his brothers came home covered in peach fuzz, tiny hair-like fuzz that
itches and demands to be washed off. The little cabin they all shared had no "indoor" plumbing, so off to the
Feather River they went to clean the day's dirt from their bodies. Besides, the days were hot, and a dip in the river
would feel good.
That night Cleo began to feel ill; it was hard for him to breathe in the house so he moved outside to a cot on
the porch. Early the next morning they found him with a high fever. They nursed him as best they could -- there was
no money for doctors or medicine -- and on the fourth night he asked to talk to Florence alone. His sister later
recalled that they spoke softly, Florence sitting, holding Cleo's head in her lap, leaning over to hear him. They
talked for hours into the night, then she kissed him and rose and went in to the house and told his sister that he
would like her company. She sat with him throughout the night. He never spoke. In the cool hours before sunrise he
left, his breath so light that his sister never knew the moment. He was just 32 years old.
Cleo was buried in Oroville, in an unmarked pauper's grave. That same
afternoon, his family met to discuss what to do about Cleo's kids! Cleo and
Florence had five kids, and another due in less than six months.
The meeting took less than an hour: all they had to do was decide who would
take what kid to raise, while Florence waited outside with the kids. The family made
their choices, then went outside to "tell" Florence.
But Florence spoke first: "I know what you want to do, but it's not right and
I'm not going to let you, any of you take Cleo's kids. I made a promise to Cleo to
see his kids raised, and by God I'm going to keep that promise." Cleo's sister spoke up, saying, "But, Florence, we
only want to help. To relieve you of the burden of trying to raise these kids alone. " Florence looked her in the eyes,
and said, "Then help me; be my sisters and my brothers. Be the uncles and the aunts they need. But I'm their
mother and they'll stay with me." And they stayed with her, for a promise made was a promise kept.
During the next two years, Florence stayed around Oroville while her husband's family followed the crops
around the state, returning to winter at Oroville. In 1933, Florence informed them that she was expecting. The
whole family was in a uproar, but Florence refused to reveal to them who the
father was. Proud as she was, she took her kids and returned to her mother in
Oklahoma to have the baby.
Florence returned to California the following year, driving herself and the
six kids. She left the sickly baby with her mother in Oklahoma. Florence joined
the army of migrant workers in the San Joaquin valley. From one town and field
to another, from one camp to the next. They stayed and worked in every town
from the Imperial Valley to Redding far in the north of the state. She and her
children remember well the government camp at Lamont (near weed patch). But
such nice camps were rare. Florence counted herself luckily whenever she had a
real wood floor under the tent.
The year was 1936, the place a few miles south of San Luis Obispo on U.S. 101, the time was early morning.
The car, overheated, it's water pump gone bad, died and coasted to a stop just inside the camp. They had been
forced to rush north, from the town of Calipatia in the Imperial Valley, where it had snowed and killed the pea crop
there, they needed to get work in the pea crop around Nipomo. The car's water pump had given out and they had
barely made it. They hoped now to make enough money to fix the car and move on to the next field, the next crop
on the Harvest Trail.
As fate would have it, a freak cold snap had killed the peas here the night before. There would be no work in
this place, not this year. Those that could had already left; the others (some two thousand persons) had nowhere to
go and no way to get there if they did. The look of hunger was already in the camp; within a week death would be
there too. First, the very young, and the very old. Soon the locals would descend on the camp, arresting some,
beating others, but scattering all to the four winds. Florence had seen it all before. The need to move on quickly
was upper most in everyone's mind.
Jim Hill had joined the family a year before, and acted as husband and father to Florence and her children.
Florence was grateful. The camp they had stopped in was ankle deep in mud from the rains. As Jim and nine year
old Troy took the car apart, an unforeseen problem occurred. Troy accidentally put a screwdriver through the
radiator. Now there was even more problems, and much more money was needed. Money the family just didn't
have.
The following morning, Jim and Troy walked down the road, hoping to find a
place to get car parts with what little money they had. Soon after they left,
Florence was moved to a different camp only a mile or so away. This camp was
on sandy soil rather than the adobe soil of the first camp. The car could not be
moved, Florence left a message with the other people who remained in the first
camp that when the men returned, tell them where she was.
Florence sat up the tent at the entrance to the new camp; she didn't want
Jim to miss her when he came walking down the road. Camping here would mean
a long walk to get water and it was the most dangerous if the camp was attacked,
but where she would wait for Jim and her son, Troy. Florence sat down under the
tent. How long she sat she didn't know, her mind perhaps on the past, of promises lost and promises kept. Perhaps
she was thinking of the new infant in her arms, or the young girls around her. Perhaps her thoughts were on Cleo,
and the world, as the world had seemed a dozen years ago.
Then a shiny new car (it was only two years old) pulled into the entrance, stopped some twenty yards in front
of Florence and a well-dressed woman got out with a large camera. She started taking Florence's picture. With
each picture the woman would step closer. Florence thought to herself, "Pay her no mind. The woman thinks I'm
quaint, and wants to take my picture." The woman took the last picture not four feet away then spoke to Florence:
"Hello, I'm Dorthea Lange, I work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the plight of the migrant
worker. The photos will never be published, I promise." Florence said, "Okay, if you think it will help." The woman
turned, walked away, got in her car, and was gone.
The next day the promise was broken: Florence's picture taken by the well-dressed lady was on the front
page of all the newspapers. The story told of the hunger and the needs of the people of the camps. By the third day
cars and trucks began to arrive at the camps with food and supplies for the people in need. All were fed, many
given clothes and help with car repairs. It was a miracle of love and giving. Doctors came to help the sick and the
weak. Many jobs were offered and the people were grateful. But Florence wasn't there to see it.
Back in Shafter, Florence's oldest boy, LeRoy twelve, was working as a paperboy and staying with his Uncle
Bill. He picked up the day's papers to sell and his mother's picture hit him in the face. He ran all the way to his
uncle's place to tell them his mother was dead. Why else would a poor person's picture be in the newspaper? His
uncle quickly read the newspaper, got into his car and headed off to rescue Florence: that's what families were for.
Roger Sprague Sr. Grandson of the "Migrant Mother"