Behind the Lens: The Untold Stories of Iconic Photographs

On March tenth, 1936, The San Francisco News published a photograph that prompted the federal government to rush twenty-thousand pounds of food to a camp in California. And by the time the food arrived, the woman in the photograph—and her children—were already gone. They never saw a single pound of it. Which is just the beginning of the story of Migrant Mother. We've been talking a lot about iconic photos, but this one... this one feels different. It feels like the template for all the others. It practically is. You have Dorothea Lange, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, driving home at the end of a long trip.

It's March 1936. She sees a crude sign for a pea-pickers' camp in Nipomo, California. And she's on assignment, so she pulls in. No. She drives right past it. She's exhausted. She drives for twenty miles, arguing with herself. Then, she makes a U-turn. She said later that something compelled her to go back. And she finds a woman in a lean-to tent, surrounded by her children. The face we all know. Florence Owens Thompson. Thirty-two years old, a mother of seven. The pea crop had frozen. There was no work, no food. They were surviving on frozen vegetables and birds the kids managed to kill.

Lange took just a handful of photos in about ten minutes and left. Ten minutes. And for the next forty years, the world knew that face... but not her name. Florence Owens Thompson. You said she was Cherokee? Born in what was then Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. She was a full-blooded Cherokee woman who had been moving and working her entire life. She was proud. And she later said she was ashamed of the photograph. She felt it stereotyped her as a helpless "Okie," when she always prided herself on being a survivor who provided. Wait, really? She was ashamed of it? But it became this symbol of American resilience.

It was on a postage stamp! The Black Panthers used it on flyers. It became this universal icon of struggle and dignity. For everyone but her. Her identity wasn't even discovered until 1978, when a reporter tracked her down. She said, "I wish she hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did." Oof. That is… brutal. So the photo helps the camp, but not her. It makes Lange famous, but not her. It becomes an icon, and she's anonymous. Exactly. It’s the paradox of so much photojournalism.

The image of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy on the beach in Turkey—it changed the conversation on refugees overnight. But for his family, it's a picture of their dead son, endlessly circulated. That's a powerful parallel. The image serves a public good, but at an immense private cost. And the analogy holds because both images forced a public reckoning. But it breaks because, in Florence's case, she lived with the consequences for decades. She saw her face everywhere, representing a poverty she fought her whole life to escape. The only time the photo directly helped her was at the very end of her life.

How so? In 1983, she had a stroke. The family couldn't afford her medical care. Her children publicized her identity, connecting her to the famous photograph. And people sent money. Over thirty-thousand dollars poured in from strangers across the country who recognized the face of the Migrant Mother. So in the end, the country she symbolized finally paid her back, in a way. They did. She died just a few weeks later. Her gravestone reads: "Florence Leona Thompson. Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood." So she got her name back. But it makes you wonder… was it worth it for her?