Name: Masterpiece: The Making of Migrant Mother
Uploaded: 2026-02-09T17:19:48.000Z
Duration: 6 min 54 s
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In March 1936, Dorothea Lange was driving through Nipomo, California, on her way home after a long day of work for the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency created by FDR to relocate struggling families onto land developed by the government.

Past perfect

For the last 15 years or so, she'd made her living taking portraits of the San Francisco elite.

But after the Great Depression hit, she left her studio and began to document the effects of the crisis on residents of the city.

On seeing those photographs, Roy Stryker immediately hired her to work for the government on a project that would involve documenting poor rural workers in a propaganda effort to elicit political support for government aid.

Lange was riding home, having finished her work film, ready to be sent back to Washington, when she passed a pea pickers camp.

Pea picker was a name given to poor migrants from eastern cities and towns who moved west, often to California, looking for farm work.

During the depress at this camp, an early morning frost had killed the crops, so some 3,000 people were left in their makeshift homes with no work, some starving.

But Lang passed them by, exhausted from the day's work.

It was 20 more miles before she turned around.

In about 10 minutes, she would be back on the road again, but

not before taking one of the most iconic pictures in the history of photography.

On arriving at the camp, Lang is immediately drawn as if by a magnet.

She said to a family huddled under a tent, this is likely a test shot.

There are a lot of things that make this composition unpersuasive.

Only the child in the middle, for example, is offering her face to the camera.

The oldest daughter on the chair doesn't seem to notice the camera at all.

And the mother turns away, clearly defensive, not wanting her picture taken.

So Lang talks to them, as she's learned to do after working this beat for a long time, and

This composition is definitely more pleasing than the last, but something's still not quite right, and

it has to do with the eldest daughter here.

Remember, these photos have a purpose, to evoke sympathy from voters that would translate into political support.

As James Curtis points out, having an older daughter as well as three younger ones could suggest to some that this woman wasn't taking the right precautions in family planning and was less deserving of support, or in other words, less like them.

She captures or stages a breastfeeding scene, playing on the religious symbolism of the nursing Madonna.

But the picture may have been too extreme for viewers of that time.

What's more, it was clearly making the mother uncomfortable and Lang is starting to realize that she is the key to the scene, specifically her face.

So she alters the angle, asks one of the children to come back in, and

But the older child looks a bit awkward and the post is blocking part of the baby's head.

So Lang tries again, this time having the great idea to include the trunk at an angle in the foreground with the empty pie tin.

Compelling imagery of the family's struggle and nomadic lifestyle.

The child looks wistful, the baby is sleeping.

And the mother has the right expression too.

Through a series of adjustments, it achieves the objectives of her project while being aesthetically powerful.

It's exactly what Ron Stryker would have loved to see.

But Lang thought she could do one better.

This is the photograph you probably know.

I don't think you can really appreciate it until you understand the 10 minutes that came before.

A lesser photographer would have milked the children's faces for their sympathetic potential.

But by the time she arrives here, she knows exactly what the focus needs to be.

The daughters faces turned behind their mother's shoulders communicates that message of family.

A family of the right size, mind you, without taking away from the central face or the eyes, which seem at last to let down their guard as they search the distance in worry.

The face is so important that Lang has the woman put her hand on her chin so that her arm points to it.

Anything that took attention away from the face would hurt the power of the image.

Which also explains why Lang had a darkroom assistant remove the woman's other thumb here, where she was holding the post, so that she could keep her other hand to her chin.

All this manipulation, of course, speaks to the fact that there's very little spontaneous in this iconic image of so called documentary photography.

It's supposed to communicate a candid truth about the moment, but this is anything but candid.

Whether that diminishes its power is up to you.

For me, being able to actually see the steps of Lange's craft enhances her work.

It gives the photograph a third dimension.

Almost as soon as it was developed, this photo took on a life of its own.

After it was published in a San Francisco newspaper, The government sent 20,000 pounds of food to the migrant camp at Nipomo.

Stryker fell in love with it and sent it all across the country, after which it came to define the Depression in the American consciousness.

And on a deeper level, it became the archetypal image of struggling families in any era.

A second thought, a skilled photographer, a mother, her kids, and

10 minutes in 1936 that will live forever.

Next time you have an instinct to turn around, listen to it.

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Subtitles ListPlay Video

Masterpiece: The Making of Migrant Mother

struggle

instinct

depression

access