Migrant Mother

Dorothea Lange and Florence Owens Thompson Biopic

Dorothea Lange was an American Photographer and Photojournalist best known for her photos of Depression Era Farmers and World War II interred Japanese American. With her husband Economics Professor Paul Schuster Taylor (who collected data while she took photos) her work captured the desperation and pain of the California Great Depression and its consequences. In 1936 she was working under the Farm Security Administration, taking photos of poor California farmers. At the same time Florence Owens waited in a pea pickers camp for her husband to return. She was a mother of seven children who had lost everything in the Dust Bowl. She traveled to California hoping for a better life but as an Okie faced repeated discrimination. She and her husband were traveling north to Watsonville to pick peas until their car broke down. While her husband went in to town Florence and her children waited at the pea pickers camp. Neither Lange nor Owens knew it but their paths would cross resulting in one of the most famous photos in American History.

Story added by sofly on November 28, 2018