Dorthea Lange follows her intution and captures the most iconic moment of the Great Depression.

Lange's poignant portrait of Florence Thompson and her children is iconic. It conveys the wretched suffering of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression.

In March of 1936, Lange was on her way home after an exhausting month on the road spent alone, photographing the deplorable conditions in California migrant worker camps. She drove by a sign that said Pea-Pickers Camp. Ignoring the sign, she drove on for another 20 miles. Her intuition kept telling her to go back. Turning the car around she drove the 20 miles back to the camp. She learned a cold snap had killed the crops, and the 2,500 migrant workers who lived there were starving.

She met and photographed Florence Thompson, who was sheltering her five children in a canvas lean-to. They were surviving on what was left of the frozen vegetables in the fields and whatever birds her children could catch.

The image was soon published in the San Francisco Chronicle and became famous overnight. The Federal Government immediately sent 20,000 pounds of food. Pressure was put on the California legislature to support social programs aiding farm workers. As fate would have it, Thompson and her family had moved on before the food arrived.

In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service created a stamp with the photograph of Migrant Mother.