The Picture of Migrant Mother Captured by Dorothea Lange - Essay Example

Migrant Mother: A Picture of Great Depression There could probably be no other iconic photograph of the 20th century that will ultimately represent the Great Depression in America, than the picture of Migrant Mother captured by Dorothea Lange in 1936. Working as a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), her report of the American family life in the 1930s, especially of the Migrant Mother was said to be influential that it created a wider impact on John Steinback's writing of his novel The Grapes of Wrath (“Migrant Mother, 1936”).

The portrait of Florence Owen Thompson, this highly concentrated, tightly composed image has been one of the most famous and most frequently published photographs of the FSA project and made Lange an eminent documentary photographer of her time (“Dorothea Lange”).Being a social realism photographer of the early 20th century, Lange once reflected “No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare to look at ourselves” (qtd. in Spirn).