Most historians have based their interpretations of “Migrant Mother” on an article Lange wrote in 1960 in which she said that she spent a total of ten minutes with her subject during which time she took five photographs, working closer with each shot. (Actually Lange took a total of six pictures that day.)

The five companion photographs to “Migrant Mother” offer unmistakable evidence that Lange left little to chance this cold and dreary afternoon in the pea fields of Nipomo, California in February, 1936. She used all her artistic skill and her considerable photographic experience to fashion the dramatic final shot, although she neglected to engage with her subject sufficiently to learn her name. She was so successful in this endeavor that “Migrant Mother” has long been regarded as an unposed, candid photograph.

The first two photographs in the series show how quickly Lange took control of the scene and directed the actions of her subjects. In her initial frame, Lange showed the migrant mother (later scholars learned that her name was Florence Thompson) and her four children, the oldest of whom sat in a rocking chair inside the tent.

In the second frame the teenage girl is outside the tent seated in the same chair. As cooperative as the young woman had been, Lange excluded her from the remainder of the series. The photographer made this decision after learning that the girl was not one of four but one of seven children in the family and that her mother was only 32 years old. Lange understood that her middle-class, urban audience would surely reject a photograph that provided such alarming evidence of a lack of family planning during hard times. So the photographer concentrated on the three youngest children and in the next four exposures experimented with several different arrangements, each designed to underscore the themes of maternal nurture and sacrifice.

After taking an unsatisfying photograph of Thompson nursing her infant, Lange brought one of the two younger girls back into the scene and worked with her in the next two frames. As posed by Lange, the child demonstrates neediness as well as a determination to support her mother. The trunk and empty pie tin in the foreground attest to the family’s itinerancy and struggle for survival. From a compositional standpoint, this is the most evocative of the images in the series, but Lange was still not satisfied. She wanted to find a way to penetrate the mother’s reserve. She brought the other young daughter into the scene and posed both girls with their heads resting on their mother’s shoulders. She then asked them to turn their faces away from the camera. When they complied, Lange was free to focus on the mother’s countenance. She then employed a strategy drawn from her studio experience. She asked Thompson to bring her right hand to her face. This gesture framed her face and called attention to her feelings. In her excitement over the success of this strategy, Lange overlooked the fact that her subject had reached out with her left hand and grabbed the tent post in order not to lose support for her sleeping infant. Thompson’s thumb was visible in the lower right portion of the frame, a detail that would drive Lange to distraction. When she was asked to exhibit “Migrant Mother” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941, Lange had a darkroom assistant remove the thumb.

Now the picture was as Lange had envisioned and would soon become emblematic of the suffering occasioned by the Great Depression. As for the five companion images, they, like the teenage daughter, were relegated to the shadows.