She Didn't Ask My Name

About this episode

In March 1936, at a camp in Nipomo, California, Dorothea Lange made a handful of exposures of a mother and her children. One close-up became the face of the Great Depression. Ninety years on, we read the sequence like a contact sheet. We look at what falls out of the frame as she moves in, at what the captions got wrong, and at who actually made that close-up the keeper.

The woman in the picture, Florence Owens Thompson, wasn't publicly identified for more than forty years. When she was, her account didn't match the caption, and it didn't match Lange's memory either. We put both women's words side by side and don't pick a winner. Then we end on one small thing to do on Saturday: ask the name, write it down, send the print.

Hosted by Mae and Gus, from real reporting. Supported by ShotBreak.

Sources

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