There was a segment on Dorothea Lange, the photographer, last night on "The History of the Great Depression" on the History Channel, particularly about her most famous photograph, "Migrant Mother," the one with the worried woman with her hand by her mouth, and the children hiding their faces behind her. The woman was a widow with seven children, who had come from Oklahoma to California looking for work, and had driving to a pea-farm which was looking for pickers. But a storm destroyed the crop, and there was no work there, and the other workers had moved on. The mother had no money for gas, so she and the children were living in the car in the middle of the pea patch, out in the middle of nowhere, living on peas and some birds the children killed. Dorothea Lange took some pictures, and then drove back to San Francisco, where she lived, and developed them, and sold one to a newspaper, which printed it. Within days, money poured in all from all over the country for the workers, the story said, although it didn't say that the mother and children got any of the money.
And I was sitting there thinking, there was no way on earth I could have driven off and left that woman and those children, I'd have put them all in my car and brought them back with me.
Which, I think, is why she is a great photographer, and I am not. |
