An Essay on Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”

Abstract

In this essay on Dorothea Lange’s well-known image, written for “The Politics of Seeing”, David Campany reflects upon the politics of imagery and its iconic status, arguing that the more they are seen, the more they are seen; and the more they circulate, the more they circulate – but the less they are understood. More often than not, photographs become iconic when they become default substitutes for the complexities of the history, people or circumstances they could never fully articulate but to which they remain connected, however tentatively.

Keywords

• Photography
• FSA
• Dorothea Lange
• Iconic imagery
• Historical images