Included in the set is perhaps the icon of Great Depression-era photo icons, "Migrant Mother," by a hero, Dorothea Lange. A fascinating thing about most of these photographs are the tales behind them. Every picture tells a story, as they say. For example, I love the fact that Lange literally got out of her car, walked towards the woman (a "destitute pea picker" named Florence Owens Thompson) while taking the pictures (six images in ten minutes), then left. That's my kind of photography -- almost guerrilla style. Get it and go! Lange didn't mess around.
Some other interesting factoids about "Migrant Mother":
Note how she is sitting in a similar pose to the one she was forty-three years earlier in the famous photo. Was she asked to pose this way by the photographer? Or was this just something she did, hoping people would recognize her? For example, would she go to the local mall or park, and assume that pose, wanting to receive attention? Was it just her habit to sit this way? Had she been frozen in this position for forty-three years???.....
2 comments:
Seeing the iconic photo with the 1979 picture is jarring... I recall a similar story when National Geographic tracked down the Afghanistan girl from their most famous and iconic cover. It was sort of sad, she had such a striking beauty, and now she was aged and wrinkled from a hard life of poverty.
It is jarring - that's a good way of describing it. I'm struck in both cases that it was possible to locate the people! That's pretty amazing to me.
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