White Angel Breadline 1933

By Dorthea Lange


During the Great Depression, the destitute stood in breadlines like this one in San Francisco, set up by a wealthy woman known as the "White Angel."

Dorothea Lange's famous photograph, "Migrant Mother," taken during the Great Depression, 1936

Credit: Lange, Dorothea, photographer. "Migrant Mother." (Other title: "Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age Thirty-Two. Nipomo, California.") March 1936. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black-and-White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945, American Memory collections, Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An Overview

PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

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. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

The images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film. It is not possible to determine on the basis of the negative numbers (which were assigned later at the Resettlement Administration) the order in which the photographs were taken.

The images in the series are as follows:

1.) Reproduction number: LC-USF34-9058-C (film negative)
Caption: "Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936." (retouched version)
Location: FSA/OWI - J339168 (the original photographic print has been replaced by a copy print) (Also available on microfilm and microfiche: Microfilm LOT 344; Chadwyck-Healey Far West fiche #29:E11.)

 Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children [mother and two children on either side of her, children's backs to camera]
retrieve tiff image [142

Dorothea Lange's famous photograph, "Migrant Mother" taken during the Great Depression, 1936

Credit: Lange, Dorothea, photographer. "Migrant Mother." (Other title: "Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age Thirty-Two. Nipomo, California.") March 1936. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black-and-White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945, American Memory collections, Library of Congress.