Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm labourer on the Pacific Coast, California
Photograph
1936 (made)
1936 (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 pointed her camera into the interior of a vehicle belonging to a farmer who had been forced to abandon his Midwestern farm to seek work in California.
Object details
| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm labourer on the Pacific Coast, California (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Gelatin silver print |
| Brief description | Photograph by Dorothea Lange, 'Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm labourer on the Pacific Coast, California', 1936, gelatin silver print |
| Physical description | Photograph of a man and a woman seated in a car. The man, wearing a flat cap and coat, is seated at the steering wheel. The woman, seated beside him, wears a fur-collared coat. |
| Dimensions |
|
| 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. |
| Places depicted | |
| Associations | |
| 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 pointed her camera into the interior of a vehicle belonging to a farmer who had been forced to abandon his Midwestern farm to seek work in California. |
| Bibliographic reference | Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1973 |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | CIRC.69-1973 |
About this object record
Explore the Collections contains over a million catalogue records, and over half a million images. It is a working database that includes information compiled over the life of the museum. Some of our records may contain offensive and discriminatory language, or reflect outdated ideas, practice and analysis. We are committed to addressing these issues, and to review and update our records accordingly.
You can write to us to suggest improvements to the record.
Suggest feedback
You can write to us to suggest improvements to the record.
Suggest feedback
| Record created | June 30, 2009 |
| Record URL |
Download as: JSON
