Salinas Lettuce Pickers, Calif.

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Salinas Lettuce Pickers, Calif.

United States, 1938
Photographs
Gelatin silver print
Image: 10 1/2 × 13 5/16 in. (26.67 × 33.81 cm) Primary support: 11 × 15 7/8 in. (27.94 × 40.32 cm) Mat: 18 × 22 in. (45.72 × 55.88 cm)
The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, gift of The Annenberg Foundation, acquired from Carol Vernon and Robert Turbin (M.2008.40.1217)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Lettuce pickers are bent over in the fields. The repetition of their bowed forms implies that they are engaged in a shared struggle....
Lettuce pickers are bent over in the fields. The repetition of their bowed forms implies that they are engaged in a shared struggle. No faces meet the viewer's eye, making the situation of the individual less important than the larger context of a group of people working hard to make a living. The low perspective makes the backbreaking labor appear heroic, as the figures shown darkened against a light sky become monumental within the landscape. Dorothea Lange captures the physical pain of the work and the strength of the lettuce pickers through these applications of perspective, form, and contrast.
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Bibliography

  • Salvesen, Britt. See the Light: Photography, Perception, Cognition: the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2013.