Things You Should See

 

I had the opportunity to cross off one line on my bucket list last week. Through the month of May the Longmont Museum has an exhibit of works by Dorthea Lange and Maynard Dixon. In this collection is the famous photograph titled Migrant Mother. This is the piece that served as one of the most influential for the FSA. You can find more info and downloadable photographs of Florence Owens Thompson at  http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

Seeing this photograph, and honestly anything by Lange, should be on any photographer's bucket list.

 

 

I have always thought that this mother of seven was much older than myself and that fact somehow allowed me the luxury of distancing myself from her. After all, this happened in a land far away and in a time long LONG ago, right? She is a model, without a name and completely void. What happens to her doesn't really matter since in a moment you will walk away from the image and one way or another things will resolve in ways we all assume are beneficial.
But then I read her age as it was printed below the photograph. It turns out I am only a scant year younger than she was at the time the photograph was taken. My life is very different from hers, that is true, and yet, as I looked closely at her face and traced my eyes along the slight crease in the photograph the inescapable truth hit me. This is real. Florence is not a model. She was a person that bore the consequences of her actions, both good and bad. Her name was Florence Owens Thompson. A camera pointed in her direction has about as much meaning to her as the year's Paris fashions. There's no agenda here for Florence. She is deep in thought about a tomorrow she can't resolve. We are not of the same age and yet learning that in the moment in which all of that was taking place for her and all of this was taking place for me, we were the same age. I couldn't help but think that she is not an "other" and neither is her suffering. Given a certain set of circumstances, that are easier to assemble than we want to admit, this is a portrait of me. It makes so many aggravations about my life more easily seen for what they are, petty.