Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Homeless Family, Oklahoma, 1938

Preview image of work. silver print on paper, Homeless Family, Oklahoma, 1938 13608

2004.14.1

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Homeless Family, Oklahoma, 1938

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Artist

Dorothea Lange (Hoboken, New Jersey, 1895 - 10/11/1965, San Francisco, California); Dorothea Lange (Hoboken, New Jersey, 1895 - 10/11/1965, San Francisco, California)

Title

Homeless Family, Oklahoma, 1938

Creation Date

1938 (printed 1950s)

Century

20th century

Dimensions

8 in. x 9 15/16 in. (20.32 cm x 25.24 cm)

Classification

Photographs

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

silver print on paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Gridley W. Tarbell II Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2004.14.1

The Great Depression of the 1930s coincided with spells of extreme heat, drought, and wind that devastated large swaths of formerly productive farm land, ultimately displacing more than half a million families. Dorothea Lange made the plight of the rural poor and of individuals caught in the “Dust Bowl” her central concern during this period. Hired as a part-time employee in 1935 by Roy Stryker, the director of the Resettlement Administration (renamed the Farm Security Administration in 1937), Lange documented the lives of migrant laborers in California and on the Southern Plains. Her photograph of a homeless family in Oklahoma is representative of the emotionally resonant work she produced to publicize this government agency’s work.