Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) is an enduring icon of the Great Depression. Taken while Lange was working for the Farm Security Administration documenting the hardships of Americans, the image combines the photographer’s characteristic respect and empathy for her subjects with her compositional rigor. It has come back into the public eye because it is up for auction at Phillips.

Eighteen-year-old mother from Oklahoma, now a California migrant. March 1937. Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress.

Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Lange’s photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.

More on these other migrant mother images by Lange (below) here.

For more works featuring women as subjects or by women photographers, go to the Phillips auction site, here.