How does my mum’s role as breadwinner abdicate from her culture?

“A Legend of the Strength of… Motherhood.” ^[20]

Motherhood is the state or experience of having and raising a child.

In this essay, the first thing I am going to do is analyse and compare the links between my personal study and Dorothea Lange’s Iconic ‘Migrant Mother’ photographs. I have chosen to analyse the photograph of ‘Migrant Mother’ In particular because it is such a well-known photograph with a powerful context behind it which is very interesting to me. Furthermore I have found that it relates to my personal study because my mother is also an economic migrant who came to Jersey In 1987 to work and create a better life for herself. 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 was born in Madeira which means that the female exceptions of her are very different to the role that she ‘plays’ now.  To explore this concept 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 before and now.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

‘Humanity is a hypothesis that has run its course’ (Aragon 2002:21) – Dorothea Lange: The Heart and Mind of a Photographer

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 that caught her eye and she then stopped and approached ‘Migrant Mother’ and 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 that they could not move on, because her husband had just sold the tires from their car to buy food. On the other hand Florence Owens Thompson who is ‘Migrant Mother’ herself says that the encounter happened differently. 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 Lange had also promised that the photographs would not be published, however she sent it to San Francisco News as well as to the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C. Since then the photograph has become an Icon and a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 time period.

Propaganda is the formation, of photographs or other sources of information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Some people argue that the photograph of Migrant Mother was used as propaganda to raise awareness of the 1930’s from a specific political point of view, which is the depression and poverty. The photograph is of a mother and her children who are subjects that everyone can relate too and therefore this creates a lot of empathy from the viewers. The photographs were also used to raise money; however none of that money was given to Migrant Mother herself. However some of the money that was raised was given to the people on the crop farm where the photograph was originally taken. The Migrant Mother photograph was then appropriated on to many things such as stamps and cartoons; so much so it soon became the most reproduced photograph in the history of photography.

Social reform is a kind of social movement that aims to make gradual change by changing certain aspects and opinions of society, rather than making rapid fundamental changes. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements.  A Danish migrant, Jacob A. Rils published a photo book called ‘How the Other Half Lives’ which was based on the slums of Manhattan. This then triggered photographers such as Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange to document through photographs industrialization of American working class families. This brought to the attention the need for housing and labour reforms. These photographs then led to what we know now as photojournalism and documentary photography which are used to tell stories, raise awareness and document events.

One of the first most obvious links that I found between my personal study and Dorothea Lange’s photographs of ‘Migrant Mother’ is that both our main subject matters are woman and mothers which is an important factor although, I am photographing my own mum.  Another link that I found was the social class both Migrant Mother and my mother are immigrants of a working class even though they are portrayed at two different ends of the spectrum. Florence Owens Thompson as a more of a ‘typical’ migrant mother with no job and living in poverty. Whereas my mum is portrayed as someone who has immigrated but is now in better conditions. Finally, the idea of documenting gendered photographs is a link which both our work incorporates. Photo historians have said that Lange is the ‘mother’ of documentary photography. They have also argued that being a female photographing other women has made her photographs more compassionate. ‘Migrant Mother’ upholds the idea of mother and child and symbolises the universal concept of motherhood. Following on from this I have used an archive photograph of me and my mum as an equivalent of a personal photograph which represents motherhood.

Culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. We often expect individuals to present themselves within the norms of their culture. We create prejudice assumptions about the way they think, act and live based on their culture.  Through this personal study I am hoping to break assumptions about cultural stereotypical role and give my mother, her own identity.

” In an era of face recognition software and data sharing between governments and corporations, the only way to protect your identity, and hence your privacy, may be to destroy all pictures of yourself” – Paul Wombell: British journal of photography (2010)

In my personal study I have chosen to obscure my mums face with objects and make her identity unknown. The only time we see her full identity is at the beginning of the book where I have included an archive photograph of me and my mum. I chose to obscure my mums face because I think it links in with her job title, as a domestic I think my mum’s work is done ‘behind the scenes’ and not taken much notice of. I think obscuring my mum also links in with my mum’s culture because often in a Portuguese society men have the most ‘dominant’ roles therefore woman are mostly in the background. I represented this in my photographs by ‘hiding’ her face with an object. When I first started photographing I did this unconsciously, it was only when I looked back at the photographs that I realized it would work really well as a concept.

“I’d watch my brothers leave every morning to go to school whilst I would stay at home all day to help my mother” – Adelina Freire

This project is about my mother who immigrated to Jersey in 1987, from a disadvantaged background in the hopes of having a better life. My mother is the eldest child of six, who grow up in a village called Machiço on the east side of the Island of Madeira. After leaving school at the age of 9 to work on the land to provide for her family, she developed a hard working ethics. Statistically, the Portuguese are the third most hard working nation in Europe on average working nine hours per day. Currently, she is the breadwinner within my family working in five different jobs all within the domestic area. My mum works from Monday to Saturday; an average working day for her would be working from nine am until eight pm in two to three different locations. This is very different from what is expected of her traditionally and even today, in Madeira a woman of my mums age would likely not be working instead looking after her children. The culture within the Portuguese society is very male orientated, the men are portrayed as very masculine and as the ‘dominant’ sex, although they are respectful towards women many men still occupying the most important positions.  Women were expected to behave in a certain way; had very specific roles. My mum was taken out of school at the age of 9 to fulfil this role. Their main priority was to stay at home to do household chores and look after the children although my mum helped her parents by working on the land. An example of this stereotype is my grandmother who has never had a job before. Up until my mum moved to Jersey this was the role she had not by choice, however now she is currently the breadwinner within my family therefore she challenges the concept of gender stereotypes within society and her culture. One of the reasons my mums is the breadwinner of my family is because of circumstance, originally my dad used to be the breadwinner, he worked at a bakery for 30 plus years this lead him to develop chronic back pain which now incapacitates him from working. As a result of this my dad now takes on ‘stereotypical’ female roles such as doing some household work, cooking and looking after me and my brother.

In conclusion, after doing research and photographing my mum over a period of months I have come to the conclusion that my mum’s role as the breadwinner of my family has abdicated from her culture and way of life. Now that she is working in five different jobs, she has taken on the role the breadwinner which is normally the man’s role which means she has less time to household work which is what woman within her culture do. Not only that but I feel that my mum has come out of the ‘shadow’ that women in marriages are in, by this I mean that my dad Is no longer seen as the most ‘dominant’ sex and there is more of an equality between them.

As a woman from a Portuguese background, I see my future as being very different to the one that my mum has encountered. With the aspiration of continuing my education and going to university.  It’s likely that I will never have to work more than one or two jobs and that I will not have to work in a labour intensive job.