Florence Owens Thompson was an American woman who was the subject of Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother (1936), considered an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress titled the image: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California."
Migrant Mother, taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936
Collection of the Oakland Museum of California
Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
Collection of the Oakland Museum of California
Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.
Lange in 1936
Lange in 1936 holding a Graflex 4×5 camera atop a Ford Model 40 in California, photographed by her assistant Rondal Partridge.
Lange's iconic 1936 photograph of Florence Owens Thompson, Migrant Mother
"Broke, baby sick, and car trouble!" (1937)