[Leica] Migrant Mother sighted--and P.O.'d

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>>>This weekend I was back in Belgium and saw the exhibition of the FSA
photographs at the photography museum in Charleroi. This is a great body

of work. Afterwards, my wife asked me if I knew the further fate of the
migrant mother in Dorothea Lange's celebrated portrait. Is anything
known about her whereabouts in the years following the picture?<<<


Nathan,
As of the early '80s she was living in relative prosperity in
California--she was pictured (wearing a pair of zircon-encrusted
hornrims) in one of the photo magazines surrounded by some of her
offpring--but she was reportedly mightily pissed off that she had never
received any reimbursement for the remarkable worldwide dissemination of
her picture. The phrase quoted was "not one thin dime," if memory
serves.

- --Mike

P.S. It is believed that "Migrant Mother" is the most widely recognized
photograph ever taken. You can still buy a print of it from the L. of C.
for a pittance, although it will be printed from a very good copy
negative. The original negative is quite fragile and is stored in a
temperature- and humidity-controlled vault.