Inspirations: Migrant Mother

Migrant Mother by Dorthea Lange

This woman’s face is famous.

It’s perhaps one of the most famous faces in the history of photography. It belongs to a woman named Florence Owens Thompson. Captured by photographer Dorothea Lange, the series of images with Thompson and some of her children have come to be known as Migrant Mother.

The real story of how these images came to be varies depending on who you ask (see here and here), but two things are not in dispute. First, Thompson and her family really were migrant farmworkers in California at the time. Second, this image left an indelible mark on a nation hungry to escape the aftermath of The Great Depression.

Thompson and her family have a conflicted relationship with these images. The images accurately depict how hard life was for them in those days, but doesn’t show everything about who they were and who they became. It doesn’t show how much these images served as a totem of strength many people who have gone through similar circumstances. It doesn’t show how much the images moved powerful forces on behalf of the vulnerable and marginalized among us.

I think about the images often these days because of the pandemic and all that it has wrought on so many people. Disasters (both natural and otherwise) have a way of showing us how fragile we truly are and yet how strong we can truly be. There are hard days ahead for many many people. With any luck, we will find the strength to keep going until things get better.