"Destitute
peapickers in
The photograph that has become known as
"Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea
Lange made in February or March of 1936 in
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).
Source: Library of Congress
Prints & Photographs Reading Room "Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant
Mother' Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An
Overview"