Migratory cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona

Artist Dorothea Lange (American, 1895 - 1965)

DateNovember 1940; printed ca. 1960

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage and sheet: 10 1/4 × 13 1/4 inches (26.04 × 33.66 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.395

SignedArtist's stamp on sheet verso, bottom, in black ink: "PHOTOGRAPH BY / DOROTHEA LANGE / 1163 EUCLID AVENUE / BERKELY / CALIFORNIA"

Inscribednone

MarkingsOn sheet verso, center, in pencil: "BAE 332 / P[?]2 f8/9"

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionImage of a man with his hand raised to cover his mouth, his palm facing the viewer.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Rotation 1. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 17 – October 25, 2007, no cat.

This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the 1930s and 1940s. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, August 31, 2013 – January 6, 2014, no cat.

Dignity 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.

Gallery Label

Lange began as a professional portrait photographer in the early 1920s. The social calamity of the Depression prodded her to leave the studio and to become a genuinely great photographer. Lange's pictures are deeply humane. She was fascinated by the language of the body: the eloquence of gesture, posture and glance. She had the uncanny ability to see people as both individuals and representative types. Through her eyes, for example, this single Arizona farm worker suggests the uncertainty and exhaustion of a million of his fellow Americans.

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