Scene along skid row, Howard Street, San Francisco
Artist
Dorothea Lange
(American, 1895 - 1965)
DateFebruary 1937
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage and sheet: 7 11/16 × 7 5/16 inches (19.53 × 18.57 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.4187
Signednone
Inscribednone
Markingsnone
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionTwo men lay sleeping on the street in the foreground. Man on left is in full, dark suit, wearing a hat with his face towards the viewer. Man on the left is in linghter colored work clothes with his back to the viewer. In the background a row of early model automobiles are parked along the street in front of a grocery markert. A sign reading San Francisco Fruit Mart hangs on the building in the right of the frame.Exhibition HistoryDignity vs. Despair: Dorothea Lange and the Depression Era Photographers, 1933-1941. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 23 – November 26, 2017, no cat.
After weeks of watching unemployed men on the street below her San Francisco portrait studio during the early years of the Depression in 1932–4, Lange left commercial practice, determined to photograph the social calamity she saw around her. She worked for the Farm Security Administration throughout the decade, traveling across the country to illustrate the human toll of the Depression and Dust Bowl in emotionally resonant, deeply humane images. Her photographs have powerfully shaped our collective memory of this period in American history.
Copyright© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California
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