Migrant Mother by Dorthea Lange, courtesy of MoMA Magazine
Toronto. In the dirty thirties, the FSA in the States was busy recording the impact of the severe dry spell and depression on farmers. Dorthea Lange was one of their photographers. She captured this iconic image of a migrant mother and her three children in 1936 when the tiny family was in dire straits.
Decades later in 1979, photographer Bill Ganzel managed to group the lady, Mrs Florence Owens Thompson, and three of her grown daughters for this retrospective photograph. One of NYC’s MoMA curators, Sarah Meister, unravelled the story of the photographs and Mrs Thompson and her girls. Ms Meister wrote an article for the MoMA Magazine titled “Piecing Together Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother” back on February 6th of last year before the nasties arrived.
My thanks to friend and fellow PHSC member, George Dunbar for sharing this bit of photographic history.
Note: The title of the post is a riff on the 1964 song by Bob Dylan “My Back Pages“
