Brief Description-
“Migrant Mother” was photographed in February 1936 in a pea pickers’ camp in Nipomo, California by Dorothea Lange, while on assignment as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). It’s a black and white gelatin silver print/photograph with one light source which is natural sunlight lighting up the left side of the frame. The photograph consisted of one working class mother with three children, who have very worn down, dirty clothing suggesting they are poor. And the mother emotion of sadness on her face and how the two children’s head are resting on mothers shoulder averting their faces shows the sign of struggle during the great depression suggest by the time the photograph was taken.
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Photographer-…show more content… Lange manipulated her camera into a position to capture natural light, lighting up the woman’s face, her right arm and hand lead toward her face and the sleeping baby in her arms. Lange creates a sort of spotlight on the woman/mother and baby due to the amount of light the each receives over other main subject in the frame; creating a sense of presents and importance. The spotlight on the woman symbolizes struggle and hardship of the depression on working class migrant women. And the spotlight on the baby symbolize the innocent who are effect from the hardship and struggle of the…show more content… She appears worried and upset depicted by the frown she was presenting and how her right hand is holding or slighting pinching the side of her face.
Apart from the woman, there are three visible children surrounding the mother. Two children have their heads resting on the shoulders of single woman and their face averted from the cameras view. Which presents the meanings of shyness, sadness, tiredness and hopelessness in the way there heads and faces are place and averted from the camera.
And the third child which is a baby, is folded in the woman’s left arm sleeping at the edge of the frame on the right behind the wooden pillar. The difference between the baby and the two other children is that the baby’s face is visible and sleeping instead of hidden. This presents the notion/meaning that children are innocent and unaware of the struggle and situation that there family is going through and affected by.
Therefore this composition that Dorothea Lange used, humanizes this photograph which created an emotional empathic response towards the photo and the migrant workers who experienced that situation during the