A photograph can make a stranger an icon of an era, while she keeps living the poverty it documents.

Woman featured in iconic Great Depression photo didn't know she was famous until 40 years later

Dorothea Lange took the photograph later titled Migrant Mother in Nipomo, California, in March 1936, while documenting migrant farm labor for a federal agency. Florence Owens Thompson, a Cherokee-descended farmworker and mother of seven, was camped there after the family car broke down. Lange told her the images would not be published; the San Francisco News ran them days later. Thompson did not learn of the photograph's fame until the late 1970s. She died in 1983, aged 80, in California.

Source: Woman featured in iconic Great Depression photo didn't know she was famous until 40 years later — Upworthy

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