Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California in March 1936 by Dorothea Lange. The photo was taken at a pea pickers’ camp and Lange took six photos of this woman who she described as ‘a hungry and desperate mother’. It became one of her most well known photos.

The photo was later retouched in the darkroom to partly remove the mother’s thumb from the stick to the right of the photo as it drew the eye away from the main subject.

This less well known photo shows the context of Lange’s iconic photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her children. They were images which have generated debate and controversy ever since but we can’t judge photographs from the past using today’s values.