I believe that more is read into the photographers intent by critics than existed at the time of exposure. There is a degree of pontification that I find irritating.
The description by Dorothea Lange of how the image of 'Migrant Mother' was created doesn't support the reading of the photograph by Pultz 1995a: 93. He makes a number of assertions: "Lange builds a narrative around a woman and her the children, centred on on the single gesture of an upraised arm". "The picture is created around certain notions of the female body...". "Lange drew on traditional, such a Renaissance depictions of the Virgin and Child, and the secularised versions of these that began to appear in the mid nineteenth century with the rise of the Victorian cult of domesticity".
The photographers account tells me that no such intentions existed. The impression given is that she stopped her car and approached the family taking five images in ever increasing closeness from the same direction. It seems to me that the closer the stranger got to them, the more nervous the children became and drew closer to their mother.
There is no mention in Lange's account of any deliberate posing of her subjects and it appears to me that the real creator of the power in the image is the mother herself. Her preparedness to be photographed in her wretched poverty was the thing that made this image what it was.
If any of the supposed intent is true it will have been created at the printing process. Careful cropping of the image is mentioned.
This is not to take away anything from the power of the image. I believe that there is a great deal of luck in creating this type of photograph. More than is acknowledged.
