Oklahoman from Chickasha in Potato Pickers' Camp, Kern County, Spring
Dorothea Lange's gelatin silver print documents the lives of migrant agricultural workers during the Great Depression, capturing the harsh realities of laborers in California's Kern County. The photograph exemplifies Lange's commitment to social documentary photography, using stark compositional choices and careful attention to human dignity to expose economic inequality and working class hardship. Created during her influential work for the Farm Security Administration, this image represents a crucial historical record of American rural poverty and displacement in the 1930s.
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Photographs
April 2, 2025
Lot 219
Spotted works by Dorothea Lange
Artists in conversation
Walker Evans
American · b. 1903
Evans worked alongside Lange for the Farm Security Administration documenting impoverished rural Americans during the Great Depression, producing stark black and white gelatin silver prints that share the same commitment to social documentary portraiture and unflinching examination of working class hardship.
Gordon Parks
American · b. 1912
Parks created deeply humanistic black and white documentary photographs exposing systemic poverty and inequality in America, using the same careful attention to dignity and social realism that defines Lange's portraits of marginalized agricultural laborers.
Russell Lee
American · b. 1903
Lee was a fellow Farm Security Administration photographer who documented migrant farm workers and rural poverty across America in gelatin silver prints, sharing Lange's melancholic visual language and commitment to exposing economic inequality among displaced agricultural communities.
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