[PHOTOGRAPHY] Migrant Mother - The Story of a Reluctant Icon 📷

What kind of information does a photograph actually contain? What can we really know about the people we see in photographs? What conclusions can we draw as images surprisingly often contain very little actual information? Is there something between photographic facts - that which actually fits within the image - and that which is our own addition in the form of interpretations?

      

The woman in this iconic photograph is Florence Owens Thompson, something that is not apparent from the information in the picture. The caption read: "Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California."  The photograph, known as "Migrant Mother", was shot by Dorothea Lange in March 1936.

On one of the other photographs from the same series, one can see that the woman wears a ring, which gives a little bit more information. A wedding ring? On a further exposure, one can discern a suitcase that serves as a table. The distance photo shows the full temporary shelter. A wind-free place to rest for a while in a nation heavily affected by the Depression.

   

There is another photograph where the mother is breastfeeding one of her children, and the question is whether it's not even a more powerful image than the more famous photograph. This picture shows the woman's inner strength, despite her expression of exhausted resignation. The mother will fight for her seven children no matter what. The simple tent is just a parenthesis in their lives.

          

Dorothea Lange made six exposures in ten minutes of the woman who doesn't know that she'll be the mother of ten children. She also doesn't know that one of the pictures will end up on a stamp and become truly iconic.

Among all the traveling seasonal workers and day laborers in search of livelihood, Florence became THE face of the Depression. A face that summarizes and embodies The Great Depression in the United States. The image would also inspire John Steinbeck when he wrote The Grapes of Wrath.

After a tip over 40 years later in 1978, Florence Owen Thompson could be identified by a reporter from the Californian magazine Modesto Bee. In a letter published in the magazine, Thompson writes under the header "Woman fighting food over famous depression Photo", that she wishes Dorothea Lange never took the picture of her and her children: "I can not get a penny out of it. She did not ask my name. She said she would not sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did." She also believed that there are some direct mistakes in Lange's notes. 

Florence Owens Thompson died in 1983, 80 years old. On her tombstone it says: "FLORENCE LEONA THOMPSON Migrant Mother - A Legend of Strength of American Motherhood."

When the image is released as a 32 cent stamp in 1998, a copy of Lange's handwritten notes and signature is sold at Sotheby's in New York for 244500 USD.

 @SteemSwede