Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Photography Centre, Room 100, The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery

Potato picker in camp near Shafter, California

Photograph
1937 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Cars recur in Lange’s Great Depression photographs of rural Americans, many of whom had to take to the road in search of work. Here, she captured a man performing his morning routine against the side of a truck that is apparently his home.


Object details

Category
Object type
TitlePotato picker in camp near Shafter, California (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Gelatin silver print
Brief description
Photograph by Dorothea Lange, 'Potato picker in camp near Shafter, California', 1937, gelatin silver print
Physical description
Photograph of a man seated beside his truck. He faces away from the camera and looks at a small mirror attached to his truck. He is in the process of shaving.
Dimensions
  • Height: 394mm
  • Width: 384mm
Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1973: 15 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches
Gallery label
In the 1930s, severe droughts irreparably damaged farmland across America, intensifying a period of widespread economic uncertainty started by the Great Depression. Thousands of people abandoned their ruined land, moving to California. There they established makeshift homes in the desert or by roadsides, taking on precarious work like potato and cotton-picking. Produced for the Farm Security Administration, Lange’s photographs reflect on this migratory and unstable existence, and consider humanity’s dependent but uncertain relationship with the land for survival.
Credit line
Acquired from The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. in 1973.
Object history
Along with photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange worked for the American government’s Farm Security Administration programme during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The F.S.A. was set up to relieve poverty in rural areas but also involved photographing conditions faced by displaced farmers who had been hit by the Depression and by drought. Lange’s Californian Migrant Mother is one of the most widely known of all photographs; the tightly composed, highly concentrated composition has made it an icon of socially committed photography.
Place depicted
Association
Summary
Cars recur in Lange’s Great Depression photographs of rural Americans, many of whom had to take to the road in search of work. Here, she captured a man performing his morning routine against the side of a truck that is apparently his home.
Bibliographic reference
Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1973
Collection
Accession number
CIRC.123-1973

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
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