Ink-jet print
This ink-jet print is based on Dorothea Lange’s 1938 WPA (Works Progress Administration) photograph, Migrant Pea Pickers. Here, Tom Friedman isolated each human figure in the photograph, digitally filling them with solid colors with the exception of two workers: a woman and a young child. In this way, Friedman imposes a relationship over the two figures (it is unknown if they are actually mother and child in real life) and creates new subtexts and ways of viewing the changed photograph. The black-and-white images contrast strongly with the pastel background, inviting viewers to join a contemporary dialogue with art from the past. Whereas the “mother and child” are anonymous in the sense that no information is given on their names, etc., all the other workers are even more so, their recognizable features completely erased. Tom Friedman, born in St. Louis, Missouri and now living in western Massachusetts, works with prosaic materials to create what are often small-scale objects that resonate with contemporary audiences. Mother and Child was made in 2016 as part of an exhibition at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, which consists of works that draw inspiration from and respond to artworks in the permanent collection of the Mead.