On pages 249 and 250, Starr discusses how the photographer Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement/Farm Security Administration in March of 1936, took the photograph that would become what he calls "an American masterpiece" (249). Her photograph, Migrant Mother, became iconic—far better known than the other over 270,000 negatives she took (250).
Heading north en route to San Francisco past a sign called "Pea Pickers camp," she snapped this photo on a cold, rainy day. The subject of the photo did not ask questions as Lange took six exposures. She did not ask the woman her name or history, but the woman told Lange she was 32 and that she and her children were surviving by eating frozen vegetables and birds the kids had killed.
Many people later criticized Lange for not having asked the woman (whose name was Florence Thompson) her name. Critics use this as proof that Lange was detached in her perspective, and there is some truth to this statement. Lange did not engage in an extensive dialogue with this woman that would have elicited more about her story. Lange did, however, find out that the woman had just sold her car tires for money.
On the other hand, Lange's photo, she realized at the time, aimed to break free of its immediate time and place. As Starr writes, "she had achieved something astonishing, something that was not only about starving pea pickers, but, beyond that, something about motherhood itself" (250). Starr explains that Lange had captured "every mother's anguish" (250). In many ways, her photo is similar to the Pieta, and it captures a mother's worry, her sacrifices, and her transcendent concern for her children and their future. The photo may have taken the woman out of her time and place to some degree, but it is not emotionally detached. Instead, Lange's photo ennobles the mother and raises her to the level of the Virgin Mary and makes her almost holy in her anxious concern for her children.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
In Kevin Starr's Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California, the photographer Doreathea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photographed the woman and her family from a detached perspective. Do you agree or disagree with this idea? (Support your claim with a clear reason and relevant evidence from the texts.)
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