Migrant Mother

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).
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      This picture taken by Dorothea Lange showing a mother with her four children destitute, migrating somewhere in, America is the picture of The Great Depression. People like her lost everything and ended up trying to find a place where they could find work, housing, or any kind of help. 

      This picture was taken in 1936, but if a photographer would want to he or she could find a woman or even just the children, in the same situation today, in several places around the world. It is wonderful that America overcame this horrendous crisis, but people should remember that many other countries did not have the same faith. The Mexican population for instance, which is America's neighbor, have people young and old in the same kind of situation, and without much hope for to future either. In Brazil, where I am from,  there are areas where children live in the streets as beggars and one can find houses made of wood and garbage where families who can't afford housing live. 

      Looking at the picture of this poor woman in this horrible situation makes me weep. And I wonder how can some Americans be so hateful agains immigrants, usually Latinos, who are just poor souls, much more like this woman. I would think that a horrible  tragedy like this would teach people to be more empathetic, want to help out, and remember that something like this can happen to anyone. Life is strange and money is volatile. The most important lesson I personally learned, working with homeless people, with battered women hidden in shelters, and the elderly is that we are all the same. We are all people with the same feelings, and we all want the same things.