{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1028823"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1028823/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2018LC5933/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2018LC5933/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2018LC5933","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1028823","accessionNumber":"CIRC.69-1973","objectType":"Photograph","titles":[{"title":"Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm labourer on the Pacific Coast, California","type":"assigned by artist"}],"summaryDescription":"Cars recur in Lange’s Great Depression photographs of rural Americans, many of whom had to take to the road in search of work. Here, she pointed her camera into the interior of a vehicle belonging to a farmer who had been forced to abandon his Midwestern farm to seek work in California.","physicalDescription":"Photograph of a man and a woman seated in a car. The man, wearing a flat cap and coat, is seated at the steering wheel. The woman, seated beside him, wears a fur-collared coat. ","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Dorothea Lange","id":"A10043"},"association":{"text":"photographer","id":"x43821"},"note":""},{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":"Dorothea Lange (1865 – 1965) was an American photographer best known for her pictorial documentation of the Great Depression. In the 1920s she ran a successful portrait studio in San Francisco but turned her lens to the humanitarian crisis of Depression-era America in 1933. In 1935 she spent five years travelling and documenting migrant labourers in California and the Midwest with her second husband, the economist Paul Schuster Taylor.  Lange was one of several photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration, an economic agency formed by the Roosevelt administration to tackle rural poverty. Lange taught at the California School of Fine Arts and in 1952 co-founded the photography magazine Aperture. In 1965, three months after her death, MoMA mounted an exhibition of Lange’s work which she had helped to curate. It was the museum’s first solo retrospective exhibition by a female photographer. "}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"materials":[{"text":"photographic paper","id":"AAT14190"}],"techniques":[{"text":"gelatin silver","id":"AAT139114"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Gelatin silver print","categories":[{"text":"Photographs","id":"THES48910"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2018LC5933"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"LVLC","id":"THES49171"},"free":"","case":"MB2H","shelf":"DR","box":"2"}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"photograph","id":"AAT46300"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"United states","id":"x29333"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""},{"place":{"text":"California","id":"x28779"},"association":{"text":"photographed","id":"x30151"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1936","earliest":"1936-01-01","latest":"1936-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Acquired from The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. in 1973.","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"394","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2018","earliest":"2018-01-01","latest":"2018-12-31"},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"374","unit":"mm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"2018","earliest":"2018-01-01","latest":"2018-12-31"},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1973: 14 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Along with photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange worked for the American government’s Farm Security Administration programme during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The F.S.A. was set up to relieve poverty in rural areas but also involved photographing conditions faced by displaced farmers who had been hit by the Depression and by drought. Lange’s Californian Migrant Mother is one of the most widely known of all photographs; the tightly composed, highly concentrated composition has made it an icon of socially committed photography.","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Photograph by Dorothea Lange, 'Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm labourer on the Pacific Coast, California', 1936, gelatin silver print","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1973"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[{"text":"United States","id":"x29333"},{"text":"California","id":"x28779"}],"associatedPlaces":[{"text":"United States","id":"x29333"},{"text":"California","id":"x28779"}],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"In the 1930s, severe droughts irreparably damaged farmland across America, intensifying a period of widespread economic uncertainty started by the Great Depression. Thousands of people abandoned their ruined land, moving to California. There they established makeshift homes in the desert or by roadsides, taking on precarious work like potato and cotton-picking. Produced for the Farm Security Administration, Lange’s photographs reflect on this migratory and unstable existence, and consider humanity’s dependent but uncertain relationship with the land for survival.","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null}}],"partNumbers":["CIRC.69-1973"],"accessionNumberNum":"69","accessionNumberPrefix":"CIRC","accessionYear":1973,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-06-11","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-30","availableToBook":false}}