Lesson 1

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age Thirty-Two. Nipomo, California (Migrant Mother), Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress, 1936
  • “Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection,” Hanna Soltys, Library of Congress

Optional

• • Human Erosion in California (Migrant Mother), Dorothea Lange, Google Arts and Culture, 1936
  • “Meet 10 Depression-Era Photographers Who Captured the Struggle of Rural America,” Kat Eschner, Smithsonian Magazine, 2017

• • “Unraveling the Mysteries of Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’,” James Estrin, The New York Times Company, 2018

Materials

Tools

• Photojournalism: Culminating Task Checklist

• Visual Analysis Tool

Reference Guides

• Academic Discussion Reference Guide

Question Sets

• Photojournalism: Section 2 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Photojournalism: Culminating Task Checklist

• Photojournalism: Section 2 Question Set

• Visual Analysis Tool

Activity 1: View – Discuss

We will examine Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange from 1936.

Step 1

Access the photograph Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange from either the Library of Congress or the Google Arts and Culture website.

Print copies can be found in the Unit Reader in the articles “Unraveling the Mysteries of Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’” by James Estrin and "How Photography Defined the Great Depression” by Annette McDermott.

With a partner, use the Visual Analysis Tool to examine the photograph closely, noting and analyzing visual details as you consider the following question:

1. What stands out to you as you examine this photo?

Step 2

Discuss what you have observed in the photograph in a class discussion, considering the following text-specific questions:

2. Describe the woman’s clothing. How does what she is wearing tell you something about her?

3. How does Lange focus our attention on just the woman and her children? What doesn’t she show? What is in the background?

4. Describe the expression on this woman’s face. How does she appear to feel? What might she be thinking?

5. Why might the children be turning their heads away from the camera?

6. Why might Lange have decided to take such a close-up photograph?

7. Who is the woman in the photograph and what do we know about her?

8. Why do you think the Farm Security Administration may have wanted to document the effects of the Great Depression in photographs, rather than just words and statistics?

Activity 2: Read – Discuss

With a partner, we will begin to learn some of the background of Lange’s photograph and discuss how that knowledge impacts our perceptions of the image.

Read the following caption Lange wrote for another photograph of that mother and children:

Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute.

Discuss the following question with a partner and write down your thinking in your Learning Log:

1. How might knowing the mother’s circumstances change your perception of this image and the woman in it?

Activity 3: View – Write

We will look at more of Lange’s photographs and discuss questions in response. We will write down our responses to the questions in our Learning Logs.

Lange snapped seven frames of the famous scene that day. Look at the other frames from the Farm Security Administration Collection and respond to the following questions during a class discussion. Write down your thinking in your Learning Log:

1. What is contained in each of the other images⁠—in addition to the well-known image we have already examined?

2. How are the images alike? Provide specific details from the photographs to support your answer.

3. How are they different? Provide specific details from the photographs to support your answer.

4. Why do you think that Dorothea Lange and her boss, Roy Stryker, chose the close-up, tightly framed image of the woman and not one of the other six images to reproduce and distribute?

Select one of the other images from the collection and, individually, complete a Visual Analysis Tool for it, focusing on visual details that stand out to you as important or different from the first Lange photo.

Activity 4: Read – Discuss

We will read and discuss another text about Migrant Mother, James Estrin’s 2018 New York Times review of a book about the photograph written by Sarah Meister for the Modern Museum of Art.

Step 1

Access the article “Unraveling the Mysteries of Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’” in the Unit Reader. Note that this article also includes a series of photographic images that reveal other aspects of the photograph’s interesting history.

As you read the first five paragraphs of the article, consider these questions:

1. What new information about Dorothea Lange and her famous photograph do you discover?

2. Why might the “anonymity of this family” have been an important factor in public reactions to the publication of the photograph?

Examine the three images that follow this introductory section of the article, noting what is new or different from what you have looked at previously.

Step 2

Now read the next four paragraphs (6-9) of the article, which reveal an interesting and less known fact about Florence Owens Thompson. Consider and discuss these questions:

3. What do you learn about the background of the photograph’s subject, Florence Thompson?

4. What “compelling question” and subsequent observation does the fact of Thompson’s ethnicity raise for Meister?

5. Migrant Mother was published in 1936, just a few years after the final volume of Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian was finished. What visual and historical connections might you make between Lange’s photograph and Curtis’s work?

Step 3

Examine the two images after Paragraph 12 in the article, particularly the first: an original negative for Migrant Mother.

6. In the lower right corner of the negative, what do you see that hasn’t been visible in previous versions of the photograph you have examined?

Having discussed what you see in the negative, read the final paragraphs of the article, beginning with the sentence “Which brings us to the case of the missing thumb” (para. 11).

Conclude your discussion of the article by considering these final questions:

7. Why might Lange’s retouching of the photograph have, for Roy Stryker, “compromised the authenticity not just of the photo but also of his whole F.S.A. documentary project”?

8. It appears that Lange had the changes made to the photograph based on aesthetic concerns regarding its “beauty” as an image—and that Roy Stryker was more concerned with its “truth.” How do these two points of view connect to the comments by John Morris about photojournalism:

   Truth is the objective of good journalism; beauty is secondary to the truth. But the great photographers usually manage to get pictures which are not only truthful but beautiful.

Activity 5: Read – Write – Discuss

In light of our study of Lange’s photographs, we will review and analyze the Culminating Task and identify specific knowledge we are expected to gain throughout the unit, as well as specific skills we will need to succeed on the Culminating Task.

In a small group, read, annotate, and discuss Part 1 of the Culminating Task and the Culminating Task Checklist.

Discuss the task prompt and what it might mean to use a famous photograph to address the task question: How has the work of an American photojournalist highlighted, defined, and influenced important moments and figures in history and culture?

Consider Lange and her photographs of the migrant woman and how you might use them in responding to the Culminating Task.

Considering what you have done and learned in Section 1, determine what skills and knowledge you need to be successful on the Culminating Task. Think about the following questions:

1. What do I need to know to succeed on the Culminating Task?

2. What do I need to do to succeed on the Culminating Task?

As a group, create a checklist in your Learning Log or use the Culminating Task Checklist to determine what you need to know and do to succeed on the Culminating Task. For each element identified, assess how prepared you are for this lesson.