Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA (1936) is one of the most iconic images to come out of The Great Depression in America. Drafted to photograph for the Resettlement Administration—a government program intended to aid rural workers affected by the Depression—Lange’s images of migrant workers are both illuminating records of poverty and intimate portraits born out of empathy. Using what she described as a hands-off approach, Lange was able to authentically capture subjects in the context of their social and cultural landscape.
