Lot #1169: DOROTHEA LANGE - Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California - Original vintage photogravure

 

Artist: Dorothea Lange (American, 1895 - 1965).
Title: "Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California".
Medium: Original vintage photogravure.
Date: Composed 1936. Printed 1936.
Dimensions: Image size: 11 5/16 x 8 1/4 in. (287 x 210 mm).
Pricing:
  Starting Price: $1,200
  Reserve Price: N.A.
  Auction Sale Price Estimate: $1,800/2,000
Lot Note(s): Stamped with the photographer's name, verso. Edition unknown, presumed small. High-grade archival paper. Printed to the edge of the sheet. Fine, quality printing. Very good to fine condition; affixed to very thin and supple archival acid-free support sheet, not mount/board.
Comment(s): The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience: "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it." (From: Popular Photography, February, 1960). Image copyright © Oakland Museum of California. [25798-2-1200-NA]