Performative image

Dorothea Lange - Migrant Mother

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. " - Lange

This photograph has become an 'iconic' image that represents America's depression of the 1930's for many. It is not the specific context of the picture itself that causes this association, as Lange did not actually know the woman's name, or her exact history. What makes this photographic 'iconic' is the way it performs the wider social and economical context surrounding it. It shows the need of the migrant workers not through the woman's individual struggle, but through the way she 'performs' a whole situation.