0:00 In March of 1936, a single photograph was published in a San Francisco newspaper, and within days, the federal government rushed 20,000 pounds of food to a starving camp of farmworkers.0:14 Yeah, and last week we talked about the hidden truth behind iconic photos.0:20 This one—Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother—might have the most complicated and heartbreaking story of them all.0:29 Everyone knows this image.0:31 You see it and you just… you feel the Great Depression.0:35 The woman’s face, the worry etched into it, the two kids hiding their faces on her shoulders.0:42 But for decades, almost nobody knew who she actually was.0:47 Exactly.0:47 And the photographer, Dorothea Lange, she almost drove right past her.0:53 She was working for the Farm Security Administration, the FSA, basically documenting the poverty of the Depression for the government.1:03 She was on her way home, exhausted, when she saw a sign for a pea-pickers' camp in Nipomo, California.1:12 And she just decided to turn in?1:14 She drove past it!1:15 For twenty miles.1:17 But she said something kept nagging at her.1:20 Her words were that she felt "drawn by a magnet." So she turned the car around, drove back, and found this woman, Florence Owens Thompson, in a makeshift tent.1:33 What was the situation there?1:35 It was desperate.1:36 Florence was 32, with seven children.1:39 The pea crop had frozen over, so there was no work, no money.1:44 They were surviving on frozen vegetables from the fields and birds the kids managed to catch.1:51 She’d just sold the tires from her car to buy food.1:55 Oh, wow.1:56 So Lange walks up to this scene.1:59 What happens?2:00 It was incredibly fast.2:01 Like, ten minutes total.2:03 Lange didn't even ask her name.2:06 She just started taking pictures.2:08 She said, "I made five exposures, working closer and closer." And one of those five shots became the image.2:17 The one that defined an era.2:19 And it had that immediate effect—20,000 pounds of food.2:23 That’s incredible.2:25 It feels like proof that photojournalism can change the world.2:30 It is.2:30 But here's the turn.2:32 That aid?2:32 It never reached Florence Owens Thompson and her family.2:37 Wait—what?2:38 Why not?2:38 By the time the government trucks arrived, they were already gone.2:43 They couldn't wait.2:45 They had to move on, constantly searching for the next chance to work.2:50 Her son, Troy, said years later, "That photo may well have saved some peoples' lives, but I can tell you for certain, it didn’t save ours." That is just… devastating.3:04 So she becomes this anonymous symbol of suffering, but her own suffering just… continues.3:11 For forty years!3:12 No one knew her name until 1978, when a reporter found her living in a trailer in Modesto, California.3:20 And her feelings about the photo were… complicated.3:24 I can’t even imagine.3:26 How did she feel, seeing her face everywhere, representing this national tragedy?3:32 She basically felt exploited.3:34 She once said, "I wish she hadn’t taken my picture.3:38 I can’t get a penny out of it." Lange had apparently told her the pictures wouldn't be sold and that she'd send her a copy.3:48 And she never did?3:49 Never did.3:50 To be fair to Lange, the photos were government property, so they were in the public domain.3:57 There were no royalties to be had.4:00 But for Florence, it felt like her poverty was turned into art, and she was left with nothing.4:08 It's a pattern we see over and over again, right?4:11 Even now.4:12 Someone's image goes viral, becomes a meme or a symbol, and the actual person is just left behind to deal with the consequences.4:22 Exactly.4:23 The image gets detached from the human.4:26 But her family’s memory of her isn't one of victimhood.4:30 They remembered her as this incredibly resilient woman who worked tirelessly her whole life and never, ever gave up.4:39 She died in 1983, and when she got sick, her kids had to raise money for her medical bills.4:47 So even at the very end, the family of the woman in one of the most famous photographs in American history had to fundraise for her healthcare.4:58 Mm-hm.4:58 The photo gave her a kind of immortality, but it never gave her a moment's peace or security.5:06 It helped a nation understand its own pain, but the woman at the center of the frame just had to carry on.5:14 It makes you wonder what we owe the people in the pictures we consume.
