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Migrant Mother Makeover
Date: April Fool's Day, 2005
Categories: Beauty and Grooming, Magazines and Journals, United States, 2005, Photo Hoaxes
Categories: Beauty and Grooming, Magazines and Journals, United States, 2005, Photo Hoaxes
Popular Photography Magazine ran a special feature (prominently dated April 1, 2005) on how to touch up photos in which subjects have unsightly wrinkles or unattractive expressions. "Can these photos be saved?" the article asked. One of the examples used was Dorothea Lange's classic Depression-era photo of a "Migrant Mother" huddling with her children in a roadside camp outside Nipomo, California. The original migrant mother has worry lines etched into her face from the stress of poverty, and she gazes into the distance as if wondering whether her family will survive. But under the masterful touch of Popular Photography editors, the Migrant Mother was transformed from an iconic symbol of the struggle for survival into a smooth-faced suburban soccer mom. Her wrinkles were erased, her gaze softened, and those depressing, poverty-stricken kids removed. Readers were appalled. The editors later noted that the article "generated more responses than anything we've done in years… Most of our readers got the joke. But many didn't. We received hundreds—yes, HUNDREDS—of rants, hate letters, and excommunication threats."Links and References
2005
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All text Copyright © 2011 by Alex Boese, except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
