'Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California'

The National Photography Collection held at the Museum is one of the finest and most extensive anywhere in the world. It encompasses many significant groups of material, including the Science Museumís Photography Collection, The Royal Photographic Society Collection, the holdings of the former Kodak Museum and the picture library of the former Daily Herald newspaper.

Dorothea Lange was one of America's greatest documentary photographers best known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) hired her to document living conditions of farm workers families relocated west to escape the Dust Bowl, the drought which devastated millions of acres of farmland in Midwestern states such as Oklahoma. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1895, Lange studied photography at Columbia University then went on a career as a portrait photographer in San Francisco. Her photos of the homeless and unemployed in San Francisco's breadlines, labor demonstrations, and soup kitchens led to a job with the FSA. Her image "Migrant Mother" is arguably the best-known documentary photograph of the 20th century.