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Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Florence Thompson and her children made in 1936 may be the most famous photograph ever taken. Known simply as the “Migrant Mother” the photograph was made during a month long assignment traveling through migrant camps in California, photographing for Roy Stryker and the Resettlement Agency.
What is not as well is that Lange and Stryker argued over how to distribute her pictures. Lange wanted to offer her work to Life Magazine directly, while Stryker wanted to give the magazine images taken from all over the nation by agency photographers. Ultimately both Lange and Stryker gave Life sets of images, and in the end the magazine used only one image taken by Lange, not the image that later came to be known as “migrant mother,” but a more defiant picture of a farmer that was given a positive spin, calling him a “new pioneer.” Even that photograph was not credited to Lange, but to the Farm Security Administration, and she lamented later that what she had documented was a “condition” and that Life Magazine was interested in news. The image had appeared in local papers all over the country and as is the case with many iconic images eventually became ingrained in the public’s memory.
In Rodrigo Cruz’s image of a Honduran transient riding the Mexican trains to the US I see a bit of Dorothea Lange. Not just in the uneasy look away, but in Cruz’ concern for the plight of a man that he has no connection to, aside from his compassion for another human being. And just as no one at Life wanted to see Dorothea’s documentation of the suffering of displaced people, few want to learn more about people called “illegal immigrants,” men and women who have been displaced from their homes by a need to sustain themselves and their families, an idea that is not that far from the life of Florence Thompson.
In much of the world men and women remain economic refugees, whether they be in Israel, South Africa, Russia, China, Bengladesh, or in the United States. With an growing world population and an increased competition for limited resources, the exploitation will inevitably increase, just as the backlash against them will become harsher and harsher.