84. Mother

I heard a story about Dorothea Lange on the radio this week. She is famous for many of her photographs but particularly "Migrant Mother," 1936 that became the iconic image of the Great Depression. The radio story repeated many historical facts about her life I already knew. Her first gig was that of a studio portrait artist. She was incredibly good at making people comfortable in front of the camera. In the heart of the depression in 1935, she was extremely blessed to be offered a position photographing for the Farm Security Administration part of Roosevelt's new deal. Her assignments were to take photographs of migrant farm workers and because of her experience working with people in the portrait studio, she was able to connect with her subjects in a way her contemporaries (like Walker Evans) were not. Her photographs like Migrant Mother, deemed her the title of supreme humanist as she concentrated on an individual's expression and gesture to help tell her story. This weeks' radio story covered all this, and this information I already knew.

What I learned from that story has haunted me all week. When Dorothea Lange received the job offer to work for the FSA she had to put two of her children into the foster care system in order to take the job. With unemployment pushing 25% did she have no other choice or was it a deep personal desire to continue her art? I keep returning to that iconic image of mother huddled against children - this new information has added a whole new layer of deep meaning to it. The woman in the photograph was a pea picker that came to California hoping to find work, her home town in Oklahoma had succumb to the Great Dust Bowl. Her car had broken down and she set up a make shift camp with her seven children. The photograph has such power because of the expression  Lange captured and the obvious weight of worry her face bears.  I always thought this image was just about the pea picker's personal worry and pain, but now I realize it closely paralleled Lange's own torment as well.

In my history of photography classes I try to teach my students not to assume that biographical information is relevant to an artists work. But of course how could giving up her children not be relevant to this image? The present day economy is in a serious recession, and my husband's teaching job is in jeopardy. As a teacher myself I have serious worries how bad the economy will get before we can feel our jobs are secure. But I know this, that no matter how difficult things get, I would rather live in a make shift tent with my children than without them.