Motherhood is the state or experience of having and raising a child. In this essay I am also going to analyse and compare the links between my personal study outcomes and Dorothea Lange’s Iconic ‘Migrant Mother’ photographs. I have chosen to analyse the photograph of ‘Migrant Mother’ because it is such a well-known photograph with a powerful context behind it which is very interesting to me, furthermore it relates to my personal study. Secondly, I am going to explore my mum’s work ethic, female traditional roles and how my mums’ role as a breadwinner of my family abdicates from her culture. My mum being born in Madeira means that the female exceptions of her are very different to the role that she ‘plays’ now. To explore this I have been photographing my mum in her working environment over a period of months. I am also going to include my personal archive photographs to compare my mum’s role then and now.
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In 1939 during the Great Depression Dorothea Lange was working on a project for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was created to help combat American poverty. The aim of this project was to capture the effect that the Great Depression had on people. According to Dorothea Lange, this photograph was taken when she was driving past a camp site and she stopped and approached ‘Migrant Mother’ within 10-15 minutes she had taken 6 different exposures. Dorothea Lange said that ‘Migrant Mother’ had been living off frozen vegetables from the field and wild birds the children caught and they could not move on, because her husband had just sold the tires from the car to buy food. On the other hand Florence Owens Thompson who is ‘Migrant Mother’ herself says that the encounter was different. She said that the photograph was taken on a camping site where they had set up temporarily while her husband had gone to get the car radiator repaired. Lange had also promised that the photographs would not be published, however she sent it to San Francisco News as well as to the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C. Since then the photograph has become an Icon and a representation of the Great Depression so much so that the photograph became the most reproduced photo in the history of photography, it was reproduced on things such as stamps all the way to cartoons.
I have decided that I will be making a magazine for my project instead of a photobook as I think that I will get a lot more out of it and be able to add more articles into it too. I think that the shoot with my mum and interview with her will look a lot better as a film rather than as stills just because of the way I am making it. I won’t be leaving this as one separate thing as I want to write an article on it in my magazine and add some stills from my mum as well as my parody recreations of what my mums role is. I think that this will work a lot better and give me more opportunity to create something that will stand out as well as bring across my main message of the woman’s role within our modern society. A lot of my work is based on feminism and the way women are represented and shown within modern society, focusing more on the social inequalities of men and women. I also want to add some work on other movements and things that I am passionate about that really should be talked about. I want to focus at least one page on animal testing and the use of animal fur for fashion and makeup, I also want to focus a two page spread on the rights of black people, especially in America. This situation has really been in the spotlight in recent news with major police brutality as well as white people adopting black culture yet not standing up for the inequalities that black people face. I think that this will be really interesting to add as it brings in a whole new side to my work and will add more depth to my work. Basically, I am highlighting the inequalities that so many people face within our society and how unfairly we are treated. I want to live in a society where people don’t see me as a woman and think less of me or for someone to walk past a black person and think less of them. This magazine is a movement for change and I want to put my message across as strongly as possible and to really highlight where we are at with equality in the Western world.
For my shoots I have been looking into some fashion magazines to gain some inspiration on how to lay everything out and also what images to make and where to make them. A lot of the images are taken in a studio with a plain white background which I can do in school but also I want to do some shoots out of school and in a new and different environment just to make my images a lot more interesting and to bring a bit more context and variety to my images. My magazine is obviously going to be mainly photography based and all focused on the visuals but also I want to add slogans and text to bring more context to the images and for them to make more sense. I am also planning on making some articles within my magazine, mainly being sarcastic and showing the struggle and the pressures placed on both men and women to be the ideal human and to look perfect. I want this magazine to really capture my spectators attention and I also want it to look as professional as possible. Doing research has really helped me with what kind of compositions work best for magazines and what kind of shots look good too. For example, a front cover is usually a medium close up shot showing the top half of the models body and the model usually won’t smile but stands in a certain position and has their mouth slightly open and staring into the camera. There is also another style of front cover where the model is closer to the camera and its more of a close up shot. This was really useful to have a look at so I can then make my magazine as professional looking as possible. For the inside covers I noticed a few different things. Most of the ad campaigns spread across two pages and are usually just one big image with the product and text being on the opposite page to where the model is. I also realised that a lot of fashion elements in these magazines have one image on one page covering the entire page and the other image of the other page having a white boarder around it. Research has been key in helping me to plan for my images and has made it a lot easier with the compositions that work well for magazines and what will stand out.
