Dorothea Lange
American, 1895–1965
Plantation Overseer and his Field Hands, Mississippi Delta
INV-2365
Dorothea Lange
American, 1895–19651936, printed 1936-37
Plantation Overseer and his Field Hands, Mississippi Delta
Dorothea Lange American, 1895–1965 →photographphotography
Date
1936, printed 1936-37
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image: 18.7 × 24.1 cm (7 3/8 × 9 1/2 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by Vicki and Thomas Horwich
Dorothea Lange produced indelible images of the Great Depression while working for US government agencies in the 1930s. In 1936 she made her first trip to the American South with her husband, economics professor Paul Taylor (seen at the very left side of the photograph), who interviewed locals and took notes while she photographed. Lange found the often-racist social order of the South intact despite the upheavals of the Depression. She made that power structure clear in this frequently reproduced image, in which a heavyset plantation owner stakes claim to his car and his employees at once, straddling the bumper as he looms before people who he seems to regard as his possessions.
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