Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California: MoMA One on One Series - Softcover

Hermanson Meister, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 163345066X ISBN 13: 9781633450660

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2019

Synopsis

The United States was in the midst of the Depression when photographer Dorothea Lange, a portrait-studio owner, began documenting the country’s rampant poverty. Her depictions of unemployed men wandering the streets of San Francisco gained the attention of one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies, the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration), and she started photographing the rural poor under its auspices. Her images triggered a pivotal public recognition of the lives of sharecroppers, displaced families, and migrant workers. One day in Nipomo, California, Lange recalled, she ‘saw and approached [a] hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet.’ The woman’s name was Frances Owens Thompson, and the result of their encounter was five exposures, including Migrant Mother , which would become an iconic piece of documentary photography.

About this title

Review

The history behind Ms. Lange's photograph of Florence Owens Thompson has intrigued academics and photographers for decades. But a new book sheds fresh light on the portrait's little-explored details.--James Estrin "The New York Times "

About this edition

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 163345066X
• ISBN 13: 9781633450660
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48