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I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother . . . She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. . . . that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. Dorothea Lange's poignant image of a mother and her children on the brink of starvation is as moving today as when it first appeared in 1936. Lange made six exposures of this striking woman, who lived in a makeshift shelter with her husband and seven children in a Nipomo, California, pea-picker's camp. Within twenty-four hours of making the photographs, Lange presented them to an editor at the San Francisco News, who alerted the federal government to the migrants' plight. The newspaper then printed two of Lange's images with a report that the government was rushing in 20,000 pounds of food, to rescue the workers. Lange made this photograph while working for the Resettlement Administration, a government agency dedicated to documenting the devastating effects of the Depression during the 1930s. Her image depicts the hardship endured by migratory farm workers and provides evidence of the compelling power of photographs to move people to action.

(Verso, mount) at upper center: RESETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION [wet stamp] / DATE TAKEN [wet stamp] Feb 1936 (black ink written over a black wet stamp broken line] / NEGATIVE NO. [wet stamp] (Washington file) (black ink written over a black wet stamp broken line] / PLACE [wet stamp] San Luis Obispo Co, California (black ink written over a black wet stamp broken line) / TITLE [wet stamp] Human Erosion in California (black ink written over a black wet stamp broken line] / DESCRIPTIVE CAPTION [wet stamp] / Credit Line -- Lange for Resettlement Administration. [wet stamp]; at center: Facing Starvation / Starvation [inscribed in black ink within a wavy vertical line]; at center: inscribed in black ink: This family had just sold the tent from over / their heads and the tires from their car to / buy food. The mother IS 32 years old. / They were living in an open field, cold and / rainy weather, in the hope of getting some / work to do picking peas, along with / hundreds of other families; at lower center, inscribed in black ink: Photographed by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration / 2706 Virginia Street / Berkeley, California

For wet stamp see primary inscriptions where Lange has inscribed her titles, etc. within the lines of the wet stamp. See also, object file for visible example.

Lesson in which students engage in visual and written activities that support the creative process of choreographing a solo dance composition.

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