Only People Over the Age of 50 Will Recognize These Historic Photos

Migrant Mother appeared as a face of the Great Depression: worried, tired, and protective. Newspapers and government publications used it to show hardship in personal terms. Viewers saw poverty not as an abstract statistic, but as a mother’s burden. Today, the image remains one of documentary photography’s most famous portraits.

Dorothea Lange photographed Florence Owens Thompson in Nipomo, California, in 1936 while working for the Farm Security Administration. Thompson was a migrant worker and mother during a period of severe economic hardship. The image helped draw attention to the conditions facing displaced families, though Thompson herself later had mixed feelings about its fame.