- Title
- Salinas Lettuce Pickers, Calif.
- Date Made
- 1938
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- 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)
- Accession Number
- M.2008.40.1217
- Collecting Area
- Photography
- Curatorial Notes
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.
- Selected 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.
