Migrant Mother

Mother of seven children, Age thirty-two, Nipomo, California. It was made in 1936 by Dorothea Lange. This was one of five photographs made by Lange than day of this destitute mother. The woman in the picture is Florence Owens Thompson. She was a Cherokee Indian.

In 1936, while driving down US Highway 101 with her family, the automobile's timing chain snapped and the car coasted to a stop at a migrant work camp. Florence set up a tent there, and Jim Hill, a man who was living with Florence, went to get help with two of her sons. As Florence waited for Hill and her boys toreturn, Dorothea Lange drove up and started taking pictures of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 photographs. Lange wrote of the meeting: "I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. 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." It was only in the late 1970s that Florence's identity was revealed, after a letter she had written was published in a local newspaper and the Associated Press picked up the story. Florence was quoted as saying "I wish she Lange hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."