{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1058367"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1058367/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2022NG2732/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2022NG2732/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2022NG2732","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006AP6684","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1058367","accessionNumber":"PH.371-1982","objectType":"Photograph","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"Dorothea Lange worked as a photographer’s assistant before left to travel the world in 1918. She ran out of funds in San Francisco, but stayed and opened a commercial photographic studio whilst continuing her personal work. Lange is best known for her Depression-era photographs in the documentary style. In the early 1930s, she was hired by the US Government to create photographic records on the living conditions of agricultural workers. Through these commissions, Lange was able to make some of her most iconic images of less fortunate communities in rural areas around Southern America. Lange worked in the documentary style for her career, and went on to photograph conflict and privation in Egypt, Ireland and Asia.\n\r\nThis image was made during Lange’s early years in San Francisco. Lange photographed people who were migrating into the city from the Dust Bowl Exodus. The ‘Dust Bowl Exodus’ refers to a period during the 1930s, when the US and Canadian prairies experienced a severe drought and regular dust storms that greatly damaged the agriculture and ecology of rural areas. The Dust Bowl caused over 3.5 million people to migrate and resulted in widespread poverty and unemployment. This photograph depicts a man who has been turned away from a soup kitchen run by a widow known as the ‘White Angel’. The man’s dejection is intensified by the hope of the others still trying to get in, evidenced in their being turned away.\r\n","physicalDescription":"","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Dorothea Lange","id":"A10043"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"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":[],"techniques":[],"materialsAndTechniques":"","categories":[],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2022NG2732","2006AP6684"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"LVLF (VA)","id":"THES49656"},"free":"","case":"EDUC","shelf":"13.2","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"photograph","id":"AAT46300"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1933","earliest":"1933-01-01","latest":"1933-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[],"dimensionsNote":"","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":"20thC; Lange Dorothea, White Angel Bread Line, 1933, gelatin silver print.","bibliographicReferences":[],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["PH.371-1982"],"accessionNumberNum":"371","accessionNumberPrefix":"PH","accessionYear":1982,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-05-02","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-30","availableToBook":false}}