Art That Inspires Me

The art, people, ideas, & places that inspire me.


One of the photographers who inspires me is Dorothea Lange, May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965:
Among her best-known photographs is that which is known as "Migrant Mother." The photo is part of a series that Lange took of a 32-year-old mother at a pea camp in Nipomo, California, 1936.
Part of Lange's "Migrant Mother" series, 1936

Part of Lange's "Migrant Mother" series, 1936

Lange's iconic photo that came to be known as "Migrant Mother"
In 1960, Lange gave an account of her experience photographing the mother and children:

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, Feb. 1960).


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