Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA

This photograph, taken in 1936 in the central valley of California, became a symbol of the plight of migrant farm workers during America’s Great Depression (1929–1939). The image taps into both the anguish and perseverance of a mother trying to care for her children in a time of economic, social, and ecological crisis. Navigating between the artistic and the journalistic, Dorothea Lange excelled at distilling complex situations into powerful and empathetic black-and-white images with the hopes of motivating social and economic reform. Lange ran a successful portrait studio in San Francisco beginning in 1919, but with the onset of the Great Depression, she was moved to photograph people that she saw standing in breadlines due to the dire conditions. These works led her to a job with the federal Farm Security Administration, and she crisscrossed the western and midwestern United States by automobile to record the struggles of those most affected by the Depression.