The Other Migrant Mother! Good intent justifies Method, or not?

[Asher Kelman]

Dorothy Lange iconic Migrant Mother set of a chain of socio-political re-examinations by the USA during the terrible years of the Great depression in the 1930's.

In reality, the mother was not a migrant worker, just sidetracked to the migrant worker's camp. Yet we feel that the image represented the needs of the moment and here photography served propaganda.

So when you read the article. Yes, I know there are a lot of words, sorry, michael Stones is, after all an academic, but you will enjoy it I promise.

So what do you think about the manipulation of the essence of what this particular real woman was at that itme.

Then I ask you, does it really matter.

After all, we have that picture!

The Great Depression came and went, the breast-fed child grew up poor but had tons of fun. So, I ask you, does it matter what we do to pose our subjects (note we use the same word used by Royalty) or give as a context to our photographs?

So what ethical standards are violated or, in truth does it matter to us as photgraphers or as a society?

Asher

 

[nicolas claris]

"The Other Migrant Mother" article that Asher is speaking about has just been loaded and can be reached thru the left hand menu of OPF front page…

 

[Harvey Moore]

The mission given to Dorothea Lange by her boss Roy Emerson Stryker was to take pictures that would support the New Deal agenda of the Resettlement Administration’s (later known as the Farm Security Administration’s) documentary project.

from The Other Migrant Worker by Michael Stones

Why would anyone be surprised that distortions of facts are produced by a government funded project with an obvious agenda.


The wire services were recently embroiled in controversy over manipulated images taken in the Middle East. Is this different, better, justified? I think it is the same type of propoganda.

Example involving Reuters:

http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/

Some excellent photojournalistic "type" images came out of the depression era, Dorothea Lange is one of the most famous. In some cases the story behind the photographs were tailored to fit the end purpose desired as illustrated in Michael Stones essay.

But then, we have the advertising industry. Big $$$ made promoting a product with pictures that do not usually depict reality.

The phrase "follow the money" applies. I would, if my income depended on photography, take the pictures to suit the client, not suit my ideals. Life span is shortened drastically if one does not eat.

harvey

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

As Harvey says, why is this any different to the stuff that happened in Lebanon? If it had happened now and she had been found out then she would have been fired and wouldn't be able to work in the industry again.

 

[Michael_Stones]

Asher posed an ethical issue arising from 'The Other Migrant Mother' article that Harvey and Ben responded to. Asher's question was "So what do you think about the manipulation of the essence of what this particular real woman was at that time?" Harvey commented: "Why would anyone be surprised that distortions of facts are produced by a government funded project with an obvious agenda." Ben went further: "If it had happened now and she had been found out then she would have been fired and wouldn't be able to work in the industry again."
The article does raise questions about ethics in photography. But different from the Reuters/Lebanon controversy Dorothea Lange did not distort the content of the images in that photo shoot. The people photographed were migrants (albeit returning to California), destitute, and there in the pea-picker camp. If people at any given time are defined by their context and nature, Lange chose to illustrate the context (as her job demanded) and ignore their nature. To use an analogogy: had she been a social scientist rather than a photographer, she would have written about them as a sociologist (i.e., as representatives of a socio-economic group) rather than a psychologist. It's not unethical to use a sociological framework but neither does it provide a complete picture because the nature of individual people gets ignored. That's what Lange did, ignored the nature of the person photograhed (except in Photograph #4). Which is why the Migrant Mother and her family so hated the image that became so famous.

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Asher,
having been born and having spent first thirty years of my life in the country that inspired Orwell's "1984" (and actually implemented most of the novel's "facts" in the gruesome practice), it does not surprise me at all that this picture did not "tell the truth" and serves a certain political agenda.
Photography is an art, and nothing in art is "true", not from the scientific perspective that is.
Medieval painters made their royal subjects look prettier and healtier long before Photoshop was concieved. Church used the artists to channel its dogmas for centuries. Partial sentences ripped of the context, staged and misleadingly titled photos are used on a daily basis in every piece of world's media.
So, is it a strong, moving image? Hell, yeah!
Is it "true"? Who cares?

Just my 0.00002 of the f/stop..

 

[Asher Kelman]

"
The article does raise questions about ethics in photography. But different from the Reuters/Lebanon controversy Dorothea Lange did not distort the content of the images in that photo shoot.

The people photographed were migrants (albeit returning to California), destitute, and there in the pea-picker camp. If people at any given time are defined by their context and nature, Lange chose to illustrate the context (as her job demanded) and ignore their nature. To use an analogogy: had she been a social scientist rather than a photographer, she would have written about them as a sociologist (i.e., as representatives of a socio-economic group) rather than a psychologist.

It's not unethical to use a sociological framework but neither does it provide a complete picture because the nature of individual people gets ignored. That's what Lange did, ignored the nature of the person photograhed (except in Photograph #4). Which is why the Migrant Mother and her family so hated the image that became so famous.

I have highlighted the principal points of Michael's response and clearly there are at least two parts, nature and context.

Nature depends on the perspective one is looking from. Clinton parsed the word "is" rhetorically. So "Migrant" can indeed be considered someone who moves from one place to another. However, a poor person traveling and sheltering with the pea pickers who go from farm to farm, living under squalid conditions are really different in nature too. So both the Nature and the Context are not by taxonomy, correct descriptors.

Still the Lange's Clintonoid creative extension of both the happenstance finding of this destitute family in a migrant worker pea pickers' camp to the class "Migrant Worker", might be considered a fair and like replacement for unrelated families of actual migrant workers at that same location and thoughout the country.

Note I used the conditional modifier "might". This allows us to further examine the real nature of the actual migrant workers in that camp. Was she indeed like them? What about race and other factors that could have been important. Would it have been more shocking to show a white woman so destitute? Which image would shock the country more to action?

Asher

 

[Michael_Stones]

What about race and other factors that could have been important. Would it have been more shocking to show a white woman so destitute? Which image would shock the country more to action?

Asher

All the points you make are good ones, Asher. With respect to race, I don't think it was fully understood until forty years after the photoshoot that the Migrant Mother was aboriginal. Maybe a false presumption that she was white contributed the the unusually prompt federal response at Nipomo and shocked America so much.
Cheers, Mike

 

[Michael_Stones]

Nik, I skipped to the end too quickly and missed your post on first run through. You're right, of course, the Migrant Mother is a great picture - it tells its "story" superbly. To my mind, the original Photograph #4 provides a powerful message, too, although one different from that which the federal agency had in mind. That was the reason I worked on it to correct the technical flaws.
Regards, Mike