CNN - Girl From Iconic Dorothea Lange Great Depression Photo: 'We Were Ashamed'

[Hissyspit]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/02/dustbowl.photo/index.html

Girl from iconic Great Depression photo: 'We were ashamed'



Katherine McIntosh holds the photograph taken with her mother in 1936.

Dorothea Lange snapped iconic Great Depression photo of "Migrant Mother" in 1936
Daughter in photo says it brought shame and determination to her family
"I wanted to make sure I never lived like that again," Katherine McIntosh says
McIntosh says her mom, Florence Owens Thompson, was "backbone of our family"

By Thelma Gutierrez and Wayne Drash
CNN

MODESTO, California (CNN) -- The photograph became an icon of the Great Depression: a migrant mother with her children burying their faces in her shoulder. Katherine McIntosh was 4 years old when the photo was snapped. She said it brought shame -- and determination -- to her family.

"I wanted to make sure I never lived like that again," says McIntosh, who turns 77 on Saturday. "We all worked hard and we all had good jobs and we all stayed with it. When we got a home, we stayed with it."

McIntosh is the girl to the left of her mother when you look at the photograph. The picture is best known as "Migrant Mother," a black-and-white photo taken in February or March 1936 by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson, then 32, and her children.

Lange was traveling through Nipomo, California, taking photographs of migrant farm workers for the Resettlement Administration. At the time, Thompson had seven children who worked with her in the fields.

"She asked my mother if she could take her picture -- that ... her name would never be published, but it was to help the people in the plight that we were all in, the hard times," McIntosh says.

"So mother let her take the picture, because she thought it would help."

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[alphafemale]

1. She was only...32?

:wow:

[GreenPartyVoter]

43. Looked 20+ years older. Her hard life really took a toll. :^(

[alphafemale]

45. It is sad. She almost looks like she could be the grandmother.

:cry:

I'm glad that all of her life wasn't so hard.

[Trajan]

2. .

[SoCalDem]

3. That's what stoop labor in the sun & having 7 kids will do to a 32 yr old woman

:(

[sarcasmo]

4. Stress is the real problem and the sun doesn't help.

[Arugula Latte]

16. You don't even notice that she has a baby in her arms at first.

Incredible photo.

[FedUpWithIt All]

25. They are a series. One shows her nursing. They are heavy images.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

[bahrbearian]

39. Thanks for the link,, this one really tells a story.

[roguevalley]

26. incredibly beautful woman in this picture. there are many more but

this seems to be the most famous. She is the earth, she is human struggling, she is so amazing.

[Aristus]

5. I seem to remember this story having sort of a happy ending.

I think I saw a tv retrospective on this photo, and the commentator remarking that Thompson lived into her 60's and died in relative middle-class comfort. Is that right?

[Sal Minella]

6. That's the way I remember it too. I remember being so relieved to read that.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. Yes, Here's picture of Thompson 4 years before she died.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. Here's another 'before & after' of a famous photo. 'Green eyes" from national Geographic

Sharbat Gula
Mar 13, 2002


National Geographic has tracked down the subject of one of its most famous covers ever. The beautiful Pashtun girl with bright green eyes could have been a supermodel here in the west; instead, she married, bore 4 children, lived through 17 more years of war and poverty, and wears the veil. Sharbat Gula's new portrait, when juxtaposed with the old, is just as powerful. The eyes are paler now, the veil is duller, the face fuller, the stare now more weary than defiant. Seventeen years seem to have passed so fast since I first saw the picture as a teenager in Sydney. I've often stared back at the original portait, and sometimes wondered where and what she was up to. The story is in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Magazine

[ColbertWatcher]

14. I remember seeing something about famous photographs and ...

... apparently she has a brother whose eyes are nearly identical to hers.

What angered me most was that neither she nor her village got nothing for her photograph.

The least someone could have done was give them a goat or a well or something.

[Liberal_in_LA]

17. agreed.

[depakid]

15. Another iconic photo

Her name is Kim Phuc.


------------

Kim Phuc and Nick Ut (the photographer) a year later.


------------

Ms. Phuc now lves in Toronto, Canada.


-----------

Yet she still bears the scars of war....


-----------


-----------

More on the original photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. Thanks for the update! I'm glad she's alive and well.

[ColbertWatcher]

19. Agreed. n/t

[roguevalley]

27. she is such a good person, filled with forgiveness. I admire her terribly.

[Mojorabbit]

21. The nose looks

so different in the two pics. The original pic is one of my all time favorites.

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. I noticed the nose difference also.

[SoCalDem]

30. oops

wrong thread

[Donnachaidh]

38. the nose isn't different -- it's the lighting

look at HOW each picture is lit. The older picture has lighting from the front, where the other photo has the light source angled, to allow for shadows.

[BrklynLiberal]

31. Wow. She was a beautiful child.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Here's webpage of the grandson..

http://www.migrantgrandson.com/

tells some of Florence (Owens) Thompson's story.


and good ole Wiki :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson

[frylock]

10. man..

that was hard to read. fuckin heartwrenching. listen to the library of congress recordings of woody guthrie if you ever get a chance. he talks at length about stuff like this.

[ColbertWatcher]

11. "So mother let her take the picture, because she thought it would help." It did help.

For future generations, the photograph made that thing called the "Great Depression" real. It made the idea of poverty something that happened to real people.

There is a reason why Migrant Mother is iconic: it tells instantly what every family was going through and how they felt. (The Truthiness Encyclopedia uses it as a way to satirically label articles that have to do with Stephen Colbert's idea of the "free market.")

Good to know that her kids did well for themselves.

[KoKo]

12. K&R

[chrisa]

13. Amazing.

That was an amazing photo.

[Liberal_in_LA]

20. Another famous photo --- before and after

Elizabeth Eckford is depicted in this photograph taken by Will Counts in 1957. It is one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th century, according to the Associated Press. Hazel Massery is the Caucasian girl seen yelling as Eckford attempted to enter the school on her first day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eckford

On edit...another site says this is the more famous photo (shrug)

[shoppertunist]

32. Eckford is all like "whatever" in the second photo

[mondo joe]

22. Powerful Katrina photo, and later

Evacuated from New Orleans together:


Relocated in Houston:

[Liberal_in_LA]

24. lovely.

[roguevalley]

28. utterly awesome isn't it. so damned beautiful.

[roguevalley]

29. look at those little babies in the box behind them. this breaks the heart.

[sufrommich]

41. That one made me cry when I first saw it during Katrina.

That one and the one of the dead man alone in the wheelchair. It hurts to even look at those pictures.

[MadMaddie]

42. Touching photo!

[wroberts189]

33. someone once said: "A picture is worth a thousand words." eom

[Solly Mack]

34. Thank you

K&R

"Migrant Mother: A Legend of the strength of American motherhood."

[Cults4Bush]

35. Best thread since the election.

All of the extra photos throughout... good tears. Thank you :)

[Hissyspit]

36. Kick for those who missed it. nt

[Arctic Dave]

37. I was very suprised to learn this picture was taken in Nipomo, CA.

I used to live just north of this area and it is hard to think of the depression and this part of CA. Even though I've read Steinbeck I never really connected the two until I read this article.

[Gin]

40. what a story.....good to read the public helped once they knew

[checks-n-balances]

44. Thanks so much for posting this, Hissy...

and for starting this great thread. I've always been haunted by that photo, hence my avatar image. I never knew the story and wondered what had happened to the father. It's good to know that they survived and did OK, despite everything; I had assumed otherwise. I wish Ms. McIntosh and her family well. She's the same age as my mother.