The Slow Burn of "Migrant Mother's" Celebrity Culture

Migrant Mother as Victim

The purpose, function and content of the Farm Security Administration demonstrates many of the issues raised by Terry Barrett in his research on ‘Teaching about Photography.’ The project initially documented cash loans made to individual farmers by the Resettlement Association and then expanded to record the lives of sharecroppers and migratory agricultural workers and later the mobilisation efforts for World War Two. The scale of the enterprise under the direction of Roy Stryker was considerable:

‘The unit's main office was in Washington, D.C. The office distributed photographic equipment and film, drew up budgets, allocated travel funds, hired staff, developed, printed, and numbered most negatives, reviewed developed film, edited photographers' captions written in the field, and maintained files of negatives, prints, and captions. The main office also distributed images to newspapers, magazines, and book publishers, and supplied photographs to exhibitions.

Staff photographers were given specific subjects and/or geographic areas to cover. These field assignments often lasted several months. Before beginning their assignments, photographers read relevant reports, local newspapers, and books in order to become familiar with their subject. A basic shooting script or outline was often prepared. Photographers were encouraged to record anything that might shed additional light on the topic that they were photographing, and they received training in making personal contacts and interviewing people.’

(http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/background.html)

It is at this point when Dorothy Lange meets an impoverished family  that the three unique characteristics of the medium; selectivity, instantaneity and credibility, (Barrett 1986) coalesce to produce one of the most famous images of the Depression.

The archivist in this video describes the way in which the photographer Dorothea Lange selected the images of the young woman. Additionally, the archivist provides a detailed account of the realities of the migratory experience for the sitters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1heTNwnJJ4

 In her notes of the encounter, Lange wrote:

“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 [actually six] 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 of the 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.” (Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)

The text mentions hardships but appears so light weight compared to the realities that Dorothea would have witnessed. And this image certainly seemed to ‘help’ Dorothea as it was very widely distributed and subsequently led to a large number of publications dealing with the issues of the rural poor.

So why would the sobriquet ‘victim’ be attached to this iconic image? It lies not only in the woman being the victim of the consequences of the Depression but in the way that her life, her story, goes on to be one of continuous poverty and hardship. Meanwhile the media industry gains profits from the use of her image. Even when elderly and very ill, she again becomes subject to further media interest as the Reference list demonstrates.  Does her final epitaph  rest in this quote from a family member:

“The grandson that she was talking about was Roger Sprague, my late husband who was Florence's Grandson. We gave a presentation in 2002. Our family memoir is now out on Amazon.com. "Migrant Mother, The Untold Story" Please read if you want the true story of her life and the day the picture was taken.” (Oleta Kay Ham 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1heTNwnJJ4 )

This plea acknowledges that the family are aware of the power and influence of photography but  Florence Thompson lived in an  era where many people saw migrants such as her, as a threat and disgrace.

To conclude, have some lessons been learnt from those days about female autonomy, financial independence and maternal rights?

References
Barrett, Terry. "Teaching about Photography: Selectivity, Instantaneity, and Credibility." Art Education 39, no. 3 (1986): 12-15. doi:10.2307/3192950.

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, Geoffrey. "The heart of a woman." Santa Maria Sun, vol. 2, no. 46 (Feb. 15, 2002).

-----. "Photographic License." Metro: Santa Clara Valley's Weekly Newspaper, vol. 10 (Jan. 19-25, 1995): 20-24.

-----. "Photographic License." New Times: San Luis Obispo (2002). Archive no longer available online, but may be accessible through Internet Archive: (accessed 11/2007): http://web.archive.org/web/20020602103656/http://www.newtimes-slo.com/archives/cov_stories_2002/cov_01172002.html

"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-