The Modern Migrant Mother

In my photo manipulation, I adapted “The Migrant Mother” image from the Great Depression to one of today’s modern plights, the refugee crisis, specifically affecting the Middle East. The original iconic image captures a mother and her two children at a campsite for unemployed farm workers. Like this woman and many of her fellow farm workers, they endured starvation from the lack of successful crops, which had been frozen over. This mother displays a face of freight, somberness, and loneliness, which I believe is a common thread in the Syrian refugees who are seeking migration today. I decided to photoshop in a Middle Eastern woman with a hijab, to signify the identity of the modern migrant woman. This modern migrant woman could have been someone of a different ethnicity or racial background; however, the message I wanted to portray was the difficulty Middle Easterners are facing today in regards to seeking asylum. For instance, millions of Syrian refugees are seeking asylum in tents at campsites to escape violence and intolerable living conditions. This manipulation represents the contextual changes in terms of timing and the type of catastrophe; however, the foundation of both images, despite being from two different eras, remain the same: escaping hardship and seeking safety. This title, “The Modern Migrant Mother,” captures the meaning of the new interpretation of the image, which is mothers today, who are fleeing the war torn and unbearable parts of the Middle East, are experiencing fear, devastation and tragedy in their efforts to migrate their families to areas of safety.