The continuing fascination with LC-USF 34-9058-C



This is the page from Bill Ganzel's book Dust Bowl descent showing Florence Thompson and her daughters in June 1979
　

A brief but worthwhile little book devoted to Lange's Migrant Mother. In forty-eight pages Sarah Meister creates an interesting story of how Lange took this photo in a Californian pea-pickers camp in early March 1936 and how, over the years, it has grown in stature to be regarded as a masterpiece of American documentary photography.

 

It was one of seven shots Lange took of Florence Thompson and her children trying to keep warm in a very makeshift tent. The book shows the shots, two reveal the tent and a bit of the surrounding field, four show Lange moving closer to the family who are all looking at the photographer and the final shot shows the back of the girls' heads resting on their mother's shoulders.

 

The photos of the camp (which had 2,500 under-fed pea-pickers) including those of Thompson and her children created a lot of interest in Californian papers and the story spread across the country frequently using the same photo. Over the years it started to assume the status of being the one photo that defined the Depression years. Naturally, it attracted critics that said that it looked posed and so lacked authenticity and how disgraceful that Lange had Thompson's thumb holding the tent flap retouched out (with thumb and without photos are included in the book). Also included are some contemporary reproductions showing its altered use as magazine covers and in editorial pages. Oddly the author didn't use the June 1979 photo showing Florence Thompson and her three daughters that Bill Ganzel used in his 'Dust Bowl Descent' book, he tracked down many of the still living people shown in well-known FSA pictures.

 

Roy Stryker (who was Lange's FSA boss in Washington during the thirties) in 1972, said this about the photo: "After all these years, I still get that picture out and look at it. The quietness and the stillness of it. Was that women calm or not? I've never known. I cannot account for that woman. So many times I've asked myself what is she thinking? She has all the of the suffering of mankind in her but all of the perseverance too. A restraint and a strange courage. You can see anything you want in her. She is immortal. Look at that hand. Look at the child. Look at those fingers --those two heads of hair."