Potato picker in camp near Shafter, California
Photograph
1937 (made)
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 | |
Title | Potato 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 |
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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 created | June 30, 2009 |
Record URL |
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