.Dorothea Lange took this photo in 1936, while utilized by the U.S. government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) program, shaped amid the Great Depression to bring issues to light of and give help to ruined agriculturists. In Nipomo, California, Lange went over Florence Owens Thompson and her youngsters in a camp loaded with field laborers whose vocations were crushed by the disappointment of the pea crops. Reviewing her experience with Thompson years after the fact, she stated: "I saw and drew nearer the eager and frantic mother, as though drawn by a magnet. I don't recollect how I clarified my nearness or my camera to her, however I do recall that she posed no inquiries. I made five exposures, working closer and nearer from a similar course".
While Thompson's personality was not known for more than 40 years after the photographs were taken, the pictures got to be distinctly popular. The 6th picture, particularly, which later got to be distinctly known as Migrant Mother, "has accomplished close legendary status, symbolizing, if not characterizing, a whole period in United States history." Roy Stryker called Migrant Mother "a definitive" photograph of the Depression Era: "[Lange] never outperformed it. To me, it was the photo … The others were great, however that was unique… She is interminable". Overall, the photos taken for the Resettlement Administration "have been generally proclaimed as the embodiment of narrative photography". Edward Steichen depicted them as "the most surprising human records ever rendered in pictures".
Thompson's character was found in the late 1970s. Thompson fessed up and imparted that she saw the photograph to blended feelings: on one hand, she was cheerful it conveyed consideration and support to the territory, however on the other, she never benefitted from the photograph. To her, it was to a greater extent an indication of how awful things got and how she made plans to never be that poor again.
The main advantage they picked up from the photograph came toward the finish of Florence's life. In 1983, she was experiencing growth and a current stroke, and the cost of her care was demonstrating untenable for her family. They put out an open interest, requesting assets to help nurture the "Vagrant Mother" back to wellbeing. Gifts poured in from the nation over, joined by letters from individuals who had drawn quality and motivation from the photograph of Florence. The interest raised more than $35,000. Florence passed on of "tumor and heart issues" at Scotts Valley, California, on September 16, 1983. Her tombstone peruses: "Florence Leona Thompson: Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood".
