The woman in Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother' photo felt that she and her children had been exploited.

Dorothea Lange's iconic 'Migrant Mother' photo was just one image of many she captured of the woman with her children.

'Migrant Mother' (1936) captured the tragic reality of the Great Depression

Taken by Dorothea Lange, the image shows a mother in tattered clothes looking distressed while her children cling to her. At the time, the family was surviving on frozen vegetables from nearby fields and birds killed by the children.

Many of Dorothea Lange's most iconic photos were taken while she was working for a New Deal program.

Dorothea Lange's photos of Japanese Americans interred in US concentration camps were censored.

Dorothea Lange and her economist husband sought to document American poverty through collaborative works.

Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams collaborated on a project documenting Mormon communities in Utah, but the artists were unhappy with how Life magazine framed the work.

Check out the most iconic images captured by Dorothea Lange, the American photographer known as one of the 20th-century's greatest social documentarians.

Dorothea Lange contracted polio when she was 7, something she said informed her approach to photograph.

​​The US government documented the forced removal of Japanese Americans in an attempt to garner support for the program.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is "Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula, the subject of the photo, was not credited until 2002 for her role in the famous National Geographic cover, and continued to live in poverty after the photo was taken.

During the Great Depression, the US government used photography to document rural poverty.

'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) has a controversial story behind it

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image taken by South African photojournalist Kevin Carter depicts a little girl suffering from starvation during a famine in Sudan in 1993. Carter faced criticism from the public for taking her picture instead of helping her. A few months later, Carter took his own life.

Steinbeck's novel 'The Grapes of Wrath' was inspired by a series of newspaper reports he wrote about migrant farm workers.

A photographer's long-lost collection of images of mothers

Professional photographer Ken Heyman discovered a 50-year-old box of photos labeled "Mothers" in his storage unit, with images depicting various mothers with their children in touching, candid scenes. Check out the finest of the group with this gallery.

Cassatt painted more than just mothers and daughters

In one 1884 portrait, she captured her brother, Alexander Cassatt, and her nephew during a family holiday. The image is just as tender as her paintings of mothers and daughters, with the father and son—their faces near mirror images—in an intimate embrace.

A 94-year-old stumbles upon a photo of herself from 1947 at an airport

Earlier this year, Gwendolyn Bruhn, who worked for Hawaiian Airlines in the 1940s, spotted herself in a photo blown up on an airport wall. Here's her story.

With the help of one photographer who took photos of children at work, child labor in the US was eventually restricted by law in the mid-1900s.

One Mary Cassatt painting features a sly political message

Critics had long been puzzled by the unrealistic flower pinned to the woman's chest in the 1905 painting "Mother and Child." In exploring the painting's history, researcher Nikki Georgopulos discovered that the flower alluded to a women's suffrage badge popular at the time, something Cassatt emphasized in the painting's original title, "Woman With a Sunflower."

O’Keeffe was part of a movement of American artists changing previous norms

One of the most recognizable names of the American modernism movement from the early 1900s, O’Keeffe’s portrayals of nature strayed from realism and prioritized emotional truth, using elements like bold colors and abstract shapes to capture the feeling of observing her subjects.

Jean Stafford’s ‘A Mother in History’ followed the mother of JFK’s assassin

Marguerite Oswald, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, leaned into the public eye after her son’s crime. Stafford’s decision to interview her was the subject of controversy, but offered an interesting character study of a maligned woman openly inclined to make money off the attention she was receiving.

Alfred Stieglitz was a significant photographer in the American modern art movement

Stieglitz took hundreds of famous portraits of O’Keeffe and helped cement her reputation in New York by showcasing her work in his famed gallery. (This resource contains some artistic nudity.)

O’Keeffe discredited sexual interpretations of her flower paintings

In 1943, the artist famously explained her intention to call attention to flowers by making them large and detailed. O’Keeffe added that while she wanted people to notice her flowers, they ended up projecting their own associations that didn’t reflect her own ideas.

The world's most famous portraits

"Afghan Girl" (1984), "Migrant Mother" (1936), and Marilyn Monroe in a billowing skirt (1954) are among the most famous portraits of all time. Capturing both unbelievable tragedy and delight, these 15 images are some of the most captivating in human history.

In 1949, O’Keeffe moved to the tiny desert village of Abiquiu, New Mexico

After nearly 15 years of trying to buy an idyllic hacienda from the church, she succeeded and moved in in 1949. The three-acre property featured a view of the Chama River Valley, which inspired many of her paintings.

After being diagnosed with lupus, O'Connor moved to her family's Georgia farm

In 1950, O'Connor began feeling ill and returned to Georgia, where she was diagnosed with lupus, the same disease that killed her father when O'Connor was just 15. After the diagnosis, O'Connor and her mother moved to Andalusia, the family farm north of Milledgeville, Georgia.

'Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock—Hills' marked a shift in O’Keeffe’s life and work

After a severe drought in the 1930s killed many animals near her home, O’Keeffe started collecting and painting their skulls. Her new style was interpreted as surreal and even macabre by many, presenting a shocking turn from her lighthearted flower portraits.

Hear the story of an Afghan refugee family's journey to America

Dori Samadzai Bonner recounts her family's escape from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and their journey to find US refuge. This story reveals the challenges immigrants face in navigating the American immigration system and in seeking sanctuary.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect.

19th-century photographer William Mumler claimed he captured ghosts on film, producing images that stunned and bewildered the public.

Read Truth's account of escaping slavery in 1826

After her enslaver broke his promise to free her, Truth left before dawn, carrying her infant daughter and a bundle of clothes. She later found refuge with the Van Wagener family, who paid her master $20 for her freedom and $5 for her infant daughter.

O’Connor’s caretaker Emma Jackson had an early impact on her views

Flannery O'Connor had conflicting views on race. She criticized racism and mocked segregationists, yet made racist jokes. Scholars recently unearthed details from the O’Connor archive about Emma Jackson, a Black woman hired young Flannery's caretaker. O'Connor recounted learning about racism after being scolded for spending too much time with Jackson.

O’Keeffe’s relationship with a younger Juan Hamilton caused controversy

Juan Hamilton was broke, divorced and 27 years old when he met an 85-year-old O’Keeffe to ask for a job. She eventually gave him one, and they developed a close friendship and artistic partnership, while also fueling rumors of a romantic relationship. After she died, he received her house and a large portion of her estate.

O’Connor despised romantic portrayals of the South

1939’s “Gone With the Wind” presented a rosy image of the Old South, something a 14-year-old O’Connor allegedly despised. Later, she wrote “A Late Encounter With the Enemy,” a story mocking how Confederate Army veterans were honored at the film’s premiere.

Mabel Dodge Luhan facilitated art from Georgia O'Keeffe and others

Mabel Dodge Luhan was a writer, but she's better known art patron. She organized the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York that introduced European modernism to the US and invited artists (including Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, and Robinson Jeffers) to Taos, New Mexico, to cultivate a "Paris West."

Joan Didion's 1967 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' laid the hippie counterculture bare

Didion wrote a detailed account of living alongside hippies in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury area in the 1960s. Beyond their style and politics, Didion uncovered chaos, with one particularly shocking interview of a 5-year-old on LSD. Her stories challenged the movement's message of freedom and utopia in California.

Families of true crime victims deal with added pain when their stories are publicized

True crime enthusiasts have never asked Annie Nichol to consent to public recountings of her sister's murder. For decades, Nichol has been inundated with gruesome dramatizations of one of life's greatest losses by people who profit from such productions. She has, however, been asked to share memories of her sister, though such memories "are all that I have left of her that haven't been exploited for public consumption."

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Child labor was widespread until the formation of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition unexpectedly ran into Sacagawea's long-lost family in the Rocky Mountains.

Read excerpted accounts from some of the 8,000 residents with leprosy on Moloka'i

Accounts preserved by the Kalaupapa National Historical Park describe how residents felt about being sent to live in this remote location and knowing they would never be allowed to leave. In 2012, 20 residents with the disease continued to voluntarily live in the area.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,' the novel that inspired the 1939 film 'The Wizard of Oz,' was itself inspired by a drought.

Zora Neale Hurston used her anthropological training to interview a man who had survived the slave trade

The writer's interviews with Cudjo Lewis documented the man's enslavement and travel from Africa to the United States. It also captured the story behind Africatown, a community in Alabama that emerged after the Emancipation Proclamation. Hurston's book was not published during her lifetime, though it was finally released in 2018 as "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.'"

At 18, Eleanor taught immigrant children in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods

After finishing school in London, Roosevelt returned to New York and volunteered at a settlement house on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side, working directly with immigrant families living in poverty.

The legacy of Agent Orange: a photo gallery

An herbicide sprayed over the Vietnamese jungles during the war had a far greater impact than its supposed role as a defoliant, a chemical used to remove greenery. Agent Orange’s deleterious nature quickly impacted exposed people – and their children. This photo gallery, which includes graphic images, follows a photographer as they report on those affected by the chemical.

The spooky images of Victorian mothers hiding as their babies posed

Taking pictures of your kids is a huge headache now, but it was even harder for mothers in the Victorian era, when camera technology made posing for photographs difficult. These weird photos will show you how these mothers got their kids to sit...

Carol Steinbeck, John Steinbeck's first wife, played an integral role in producing 'The Grapes of Wrath.'

Scholars note that many Cassatt paintings are about women's labor

The women in her portraits are often performing domestic work, something that contemporary scholars consider a subtle protest of how women's labor was often overlooked during Cassatt's time. Fittingly, Cassatt often hired working-class women as models, ensuring the portraits were not only accurate but that the subjects were appropriately compensated.

Read an excerpt from 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,' the story of the Black woman whose nonconsensually sampled cancerous cells underpin thousands of research papers and several Nobel Prize-winning works.

Georgia O'Keeffe's subjects evolved based on the landscapes she lived in

Texas horizons, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico deserts are examples of the subjects O'Keeffe famously painted over the course of her life. While her style remained mostly consistent throughout her seven-decade career, her surroundings significantly changed the content of her artwork.

Photographer Mathieu Stern found a little girl's 120-year-old time capsule containing two glass plate negatives in his family home, and developed the photos, unveiling images of the child's pets.