[Leica] OT: discovered Lange photos

[drodgers at casefarms.com (David Rodgers)]

Jon

Thanks for posting that info. I've always liked Dorothea Lange's work. I 
discovered her work for the first time while I was in college. 

I was attending college in the Midwest. One day while looking at one of her 
books I noticed a photograph of a gas station. It wasn't a particularly 
strong image and I'd probably browsed through it several times before, but 
this time I noticed the caption. It said something like "Riverbank Gas 
Station". I immediately wondered if it was the Riverbank, CA which is only a 
few miles from where I grew up (which, BTW, is also very close to Empire 
where Florence was laid to rest). 

There was a small white post with street names in the photo. When I went 
home for the summer (this was back in the '70's) I found the street corner 
where the photograph had been taken. The gas station had been leveled but 
the small street sign post was still there. That confirmed to me that I was 
at the right spot. 

I stood where I thought the photo had been taken. I was in the middle of a 
road which obviously had more traffic than in the 30's. I snapped a couple 
of shots with my new Fujica ST801. The negs are buried somewhere in my 
archives. They were just photos of an empty lot.  

A couple of days later the street signpost -- which was the last remaining 
link to Lange's photograph -- was gone and shortly thereafter the corner was 
redeveloped. I remember the whole thing as being a strange experience; 
something that only photographers might appreciate.

Sometimes I wish that I'd grabbed the street signpost. OTOH, if I can't even 
keep up with the negative...... :-) 
 
daveR  

-----Original Message-----
From: jon.stanton@comcast.net [mailto:jon.stanton@comcast.net] 
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 7:13 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] OT: discovered Lange photos

Walt,    Here is a "clip" on Migrant Mother"

" Florence Owens Thompson was born on September 1, 1903, in the Indian 
Territory of the Cherokee Nation (now Oklahoma) and spent her childhood and 
early youth on a small family farm outside Tahlequah.

Much hardship

When she was 17, Florence married Cleo Owens and in the next decade, became 
mother to six children. Cleo died of tuberculosis in 1931 but a couple of 
years later, Florence became pregnant again from her relationship with a 
wealthy Oroville businessman and gave birth to son. Subsequently, James R. 
Hill, a butcher from Los Angeles, came into her life and a daughter was born 
in March 1935. (Florence had three more children by Hill. She married 
hospital administrator George Thompson well after World War II).

For a large part of her life, Florence suffered unmitigated anguish, penury 
and hardship, moving from one place to another, giving birth to and raising 
children. But she was also a woman who enjoyed life and loved her children. 
In 1983, Florence was stricken with cancer. A surgery resulted in a stroke. 
In order to raise about $1,400 for her nursing, her son Troy Owens sought 
the help of Jack Foley, who filed a story in San Jose Mercury News. Public 
response to the special "Migrant Mother Fund" was a staggering $35,000! 
Sadly, Florence never ever recovered from her sickness. On September 
16,1983, a couple of weeks after her 80th birthday, she died. She was buried 
at a cemetery in Empire, California with a gravestone that read: "Migrant 
Mother: A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood."

The true picture

Dorothea's picture of Florence, "Migrant Mother", is among the most famous 
photographs of American history. The iconic image ??? snapped in March 1936 
at the Pea-Pickers Camp in Nipomo ??? captured the heart of the public, 
moved a nation, got reproduced thousands of times and now hangs in the U.S. 
Library of Congress.

According to Geoffrey Dunn, award-winning documentary filmmaker, film 
professor and historian, "no other image in the American archive resonates 
with the emotional urgency and tragic poignancy of this photograph ... 
Indeed, Lange's sombre portrait has achieved near mythical status, 
symbolising, if not defining, an entire era in our nation's history." Dunn 
is, however, quick to add that for all its acclaim, the photograph remained 
shrouded in mystery and behind-the-scenes controversy.

For one, the identity of the sitter (Florence) in Lange's picture was not 
known till the late 1970s when Florence expressed disdain for the image and 
declared that she felt "exploited" by Lange's portrait. "I wish she (Lange) 
hadn't taken my picture," she fumed. "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."

Lange herself had recalled in 1960: "I did not ask her name or her history. 
She told me she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen 
vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children 
killed..." In the field notes, she recorded: "Seven hungry children. Father 
is native Californian. Destitute in pea pickers' camp... because of failure 
of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tires to buy food."

Dunn remarks, "Lange was uncharacteristically remiss in ascertaining 
information about her subject. The little she did record was largely 
misleading and factually incorrect ... Through her negligence, in effect, 
Lange perpetrated a case of historic deception on the American public."

While reconstructing the day when the famous photograph was made, Dunn 
reveals that Florence, the children and Jim Hill packed up their Hudson 
sedan and headed north to find work. On Highway 101, just outside of Nipomo, 
the timing chain on the Hudson broke and they were forced to pull into the 
pea-picker's camp to mend their car. "We got the radiator fixed and hurried 
back to camp to fix the car," he quotes Florence's son, Troy Owens. "When we 
got there, Mama told us there had been this lady who had been taking 
pictures, but that's all she told us, you know. It wasn't a big deal to her 
at the time."

On Lange's assertion about their selling tyres to buy food, Dunn quotes Troy 
again: "There's no way we sold our tires, because we didn't have any to 
sell. The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them. I 
don't believe Lange was lying, I just think she had one story mixed up with 
another. Or she was borrowing to fill in what she didn't have.... That photo 
may well have saved some peoples' lives, but I can tell you for certain, it 
didn't save ours."

The picture had a silver lining. When Florence's sickness generated national 
attention and contributions and touching messages poured in from all over 
the country, Owens admitted: "None of us ever really understood how deeply 
Mama's photo affected people. I guess we had only looked at it from our 
perspective. For Mama and us, the photo had always been a bit of curse. 
After all those letters came in, I think it gave us a sense of pride."