“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions.”
Dorothea Lange in “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget: Migrant Mother”
Dorothea Lange is the most famous photographer associated with the Great Depression. She grew up in poverty in New York City and had a difficult upbringing. She contracted polio at age seven and was left with a limp that resulted in other kids cruelly calling her “Limpy”. She had no friends in elementary school. Her father left the family at age twelve. To get to school, she had to walk through the worst part of the city. She developed her “face of invisibility” to avoid drawing attention. When she graduated from high school, she was determined to become a photographer, although she had never taken a picture in her life. She got a job in a photo studio and a few years later, with money she had saved, she and her only friend in high school decided to make a trip around the world. They got as far as San Francisco where a pickpocket stole their money. Dorothea got various photo jobs in San Fran and eventually owned a successful portrait studio. When the Depression hit, she lost most of her clients and began to leave the studio to take pictures of the hungry and homeless. Her “face of invisibility” allowed her access to people who were wary of strangers. She got a job with a New Deal agency taking pictures of migrant workers throughout the country. She did not look upon her pictures as art. Instead, she saw them as a means of bringing attention to the plight of the poor. In 1936, she snapped her famous “Migrant Mother” in a pea-pickers camp in California. It became the most famous photograph of the Depression.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/photography-biographies/dorothea-lange
“Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange
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