# @gettyimages on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CAApK_KFxTG
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16446236-gettyimages-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/0340770019.jpg
- **Posted:** 2020-05-10T14:05:25.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Getty Images (@GettyImages) — https://gondola.cc/GettyImages

## Caption

One of the most famous images in American photography, Dorothea Lange's portrait of migrant worker Florence Owens Thompson and three of her children was taken at a pea-pickers camp, north of Los Angeles, in 1936.⁠
Highlighting the plight of the rural poor during the nation's Great Depression, the work was commissioned by the Resettlement Administration, a federal agency established under the US government's New Deal drive.⁠
Memories of the encounter differ between the photographer and the subject. Captured at the end of a long road trip - Lange had originally passed by the camp, but was compelled to turn around - unusually, there was little interaction in the picture-making process.⁠
Nevertheless, the portrait's message was stark. Shot on a 4x5 Graflex camera and tightly cropped, the mother is grave, anxious, and yet remains the central figure that her children fold into; their faces turned away while she gazes out from the temporary shelter.⁠
Upon publication, 20,000 pounds of food were sent to the camp by the authorities. ⁠
Beyond that immediate impact, the image developed its own legend in subsequent decades, respected for its distillation of the era and continued agency. When the identity of the 'Migrant Mother' was discovered in the 1970s, Thompson's Cherokee ancestry provoked questions as to how Native American narratives were represented during the crisis.⁠
Thompson herself later remarried and settled in Modesto, California. Her gravestone reads: "Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood".⁠
📷: Dorothea Lange/GraphicaArtis/Getty Images | gettyarchive | #GettyImages25 #PreservingThePast #GettyArchive⁠
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#mothersday #migrantmother #dorothealange #roystryker #greatdepression #1930s #UShistory #socialhistory #documentaryphotography #socialdocumentary #masterofphotography #womeninphotography #reportage #americanmother #historyofphotography #poverty #migration #concernedphotography #historyphoto #historyphotographed  #archivephoto #photoarchive #vintagephoto #photolibrary #gettyimages⁠

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## Tags

historyphoto, gettyarchive, gettyimages25, concernedphotography, documentaryphotography, socialhistory, poverty, photolibrary, 1930s, roystryker, preservingthepast, migrantmother, photoarchive, gettyimages, archivephoto, ushistory, historyofphotography, migration, greatdepression, socialdocumentary, womeninphotography, mothersday, americanmother, reportage, masterofphotography, dorothealange, historyphotographed, vintagephoto

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