'Whenever I see this photograph reproduced, I give it a salute as to an old friend. I did not create it, but I was behind that big, old Graflex, using it as an instrument for recording something of importance. The woman in this picture has become a symbol to many people; until now it is her picture, not mine. What I am trying to tell other photographers is that had I not been deeply involved in my undertaking on that field trip, I would not have had to turn back. What I am trying to say is that I believe this inner compulsion to be the vital ingredient in our work; that if our work is to carry force and meaning to our view we must be willing to go all-out. "Migrant Mother" always reminds me of this, although I was in that camp for only ten minutes. Then I closed my camera and did go straight home.'
ON 10 MARCH 1936, the San Francisco News published the first of several illustrated articles highlighting the destitution of jobless pea pickers in Nipomo, California, inadvertently introducing the world to Florence Owens Thompson, who history would remember as Migrant Mother. Dorothea Lange’s immortal image of Thompson, her face a map of concern for the children huddled around her, was included on 11 March 1936, three days into the news cycle, and would go on to become one of the most recognized images of the 20th century.
While employed by the United States government in March of 1936, Lange passed a sign for the pea pickers’ camp in Nipomo while driving home following a month on assignment. Lange’s own retelling of this story would indicate that something nettled at her until, about twenty miles down the road, she felt compelled to turn back.
‘I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon.’
Upon arrival, Lange exposed several negatives, which were published less than two weeks later. Roy Striker, then head of the Photography division for the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration. later reflected that ‘When Dorothea took that picture, that was the ultimate. She never surpassed it. To me, it was the picture of Farm Security. The others were marvelous but that was special. . . I’ll stand on that picture as long as I live.’ (In This Proud Land: America 1935 - 1943 as Seen in the FSA Photographs, New York Graphic Society, 1973, p. 19)
Lange’s printing technique only serves to enhance the power of the image. Rather than a straightforward print from the negative, this early print from the 1940s has been sensitively printed by carefully dodging and burning certain areas of the image in the darkroom. As is apparent in many of the original Library of Congress files, straight prints from the negative show a shadowy thumb in the lower right corner, creating a visually layered composition, while the present print has a darker lower right corner, refocusing the eye to the center rather than the edges for maximum visual impact. Highlights have been sensitively retained on the mother’s hand, her face, and the necks of the children turned away from the camera.
At the time of this writing, this oversized print, measuring 23 by 18 inches, is believed to be the largest print outside of a museum collection. Early prints of Migrant Mother are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the Art Institute of Chicago.