Awesome!! More Dorotha Lange photos (high-res scans available!!)

[priller]

Everyone knows this iconic photo by Dorothea Lange of the migrant mother (originally titled "Destitute pea-pickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children):



Ms Lange actually took 5 photos of this woman and her children. They are all available on-line. And -- this is the best part -- high-res scans of the original negatives are available for free download. We're talking 50 MB TIFF files. That means you can make your own prints, if you have a good photo printer.

The link for all this is at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

Here are the other photos in the series:

[Maestro]

1. Such anguish in those photos.

You can tell that it was a hard 32 years! The most telling picture is the last one. They have nothing.

[priller]

2. Lange said they had just sold the tires off their car.

And were living on frozen vegetables and small birds the children would kill.

And yes, you can definitely tell those are hard years on her otherwise attractive face.

Hard to believe it was just 70 years ago.

[Maestro]

4. She is an attractive woman.

But her life just seems drained from her face. Sadly, even today, if people put so much energy into just surviving, there is not a whole lot of energy left for anything else. The Dust Bowl era was horrible. This family was from the Dust Bowl era, correct? They were migrating west?

[LeftCoast]

3. Those are amazing photos

They really make you want to know what happened to that family.

[priller]

6. The family survived

I found several interesting things about them. The woman was named Francis Owens Thompson, and despite her English sounding name, she was a full-blooded native American from Oklahoma. She and her family survived, although they had a very hard life. Thompson eventually died of cancer in the early 80's.

Her family said that for a long time they resented the photograph. First, because they thought Dorothea Lange made a lot of money from it (she didn't directly profit from the photo, although it surely helped her career). Second, they said many people assumed the photo "saved" their family, but by the time food and money got to Nipomo, CA (where the photo was taken), they had long moved on. Also, they said Lange got some of the details about them wrong in her description (they assumed she got them confused with another family).

It wasn't until Thompson got cancer in the 80's, when the family sent out an appeal for help and money, that they fully realized the impact the photo had on so many people, and their attitude towards the photograph changed for the better.

More info here: http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2006/3/06.03.10.x.html#h

[LeftCoast]

7. Thanks for filling me in on the back-story

I'm glad they finally were at peace with the photos. :hi:

[babylonsister]

5. I'm 50, and I remember that first image from a coffee table book

my parents had when I was very young. It always left an impression with me. Thanks for reintroducing it. Those pics are so sad; they make me wonder what happened to this family.

[BrightKnight]

8. Some of her personal snapshots

Dorothea Lange is one of my favorite photographers.

Some of her personal snapshots were very touching. They were never intended to be displayed but it is interesting to view them in the context of her FSA work.

It is clear that she had a deep love of people. That is why you can see and feel every sling and arrow of outrageous fortune in her FSA photos.






















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I would have cropped and cleaned up these horrible scans but I am using an emergancy backup comptuer.