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Document A

Dorothea Lange took this photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and three of her seven children in Nipomo, California in 1936. Thompson and her husband were migrant laborers, which meant they often moved to find work. Lange had been paid to take photographs of migrant workers by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal program designed to help impoverished migrants, especially in California where there were large numbers of Dust Bowl refugees. The leaders of the Resettlement Administration hired Lange because they wanted photographs that they could use to raise public support for its programs.

Title: Destitute Peapickers in California; a 32 Year Old Mother of Seven Children. February 1936 Location: Nipomo, California Date: 1936 Photographer: Dorothea Lange

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Document B

The following excerpt is from an article titled “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget” that Lange wrote about taking her famous “Migrant Mother” photograph. It appeared in the magazine Popular Photography in 1960. I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon. 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. Vocabulary homing pigeon: type of bird that can find its way home from hundreds of miles away exposures: photographs

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Documents C-F are photographs that Lange took just before she captured the famous Migrant Mother shot. She sent each of these photographs to the Resettlement Administration along with the “Migrant Mother” photo.

Document C

Document D

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Document E

Document F

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Document G

This is the first photograph that Lange took of the family as she arrived on the scene. Lange chose not to send this photograph to the Resettlement Administration with the other five photos in the collection. It was published in an article by her husband, Paul Taylor in 1970, five years after Lange’s death.

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Guiding Questions Document A When evaluating whether a historical photograph, historians consider various questions, including:

• When and where was the photograph was taken? • Who took the photograph? What was their perspective on the events or people

being photographed, and how might that have influenced what they chose to shoot?

• Why was the photograph taken? Might the photographer have wanted to portray a scene in a particular way?

• Under what circumstances was the photograph taken? How might these circumstances have limited or enabled what the photographer captured?

• Was the photograph candid or was the scene manipulated or posed? • What technology did the photographer use, and how might that have influenced

the image created? 1. (Sourcing, contextualization) Considering the questions above, what are the strengths and limitations of Lange’s photograph as evidence of the conditions facing migrant workers in California at the time? Explain. 2. (Corroboration) What else would you want to know about the photograph to help you evaluate its reliability? Document B 1. How does this document affect your understanding of “Migrant Mother” as evidence of what living conditions were like for migrants in California during the Depression?

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2. Why might a historian question the reliability of this document? Documents C-F 1. How do these photographs affect your understanding of the “Migrant Mother” photograph or how it was taken? 2. Do these photographs affect your understanding of Lange’s “Migrant Mother” as evidence of the past? Explain. Document G 1. How does this photograph affect your understanding of the “Migrant Mother” photograph or how it was taken? 2. Does this photograph affect whether you think Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph is strong evidence of the past? Explain.