| Maker(s): | Lange, Dorothea
| | Culture: | American (1895 - 1965)
| | Title: | The Slave Market, from the series, San Francisco, Unemployed
| | Date Made: | 1933
| | Type: | Photograph
| | Materials: | gelatin silver print mounted on cream colored paperboard
| | Place Made: | United States; California; San Francisco
| | Measurements: | mount: 7 5/16 x 5 1/4 in.; 18.5738 x 13.335 cm; print: 5 1/2 x 3 3/8 in.; 13.97 x 8.5725 cm
| | Narrative Inscription: | signed and dated in pencil at lower right under image: Dorothea Lange 1933
| | Accession Number: | SC 1987.18.1
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Therese Heyman (Therese Thau, class of 1951) in memory of her father, Morris Thau
| | Museum Collection: | Smith College Museum of Art
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Description:
two men standing next to a building, sign above their heads
Label Text:
Dorothea Lange was raised in the New York metropolitan area, and began her photographic career through a series of apprenticeships with commercial photographers. After moving to San Francisco in 1918, she opened her own studio a year later, specializing in portrait photography, particularly of members of the city's high society. After the stock market crash in 1929 this business declined, and the artist began to notice the stark difference between her previous work photographing wealthy people and the actual state of the world around her. She was particularly drawn to the large numbers of unemployed men who loitered around the streets near her studio, and she began creating sensitive, non-intrusive images that captured their hopeless and forced inertia. Although many of her images speak for themselves, some seem innocuous without their titles. On casual observation, the image she titled The Slave Market appears to be two men having a conversation on the street. The title, however, indicates that these men are waiting at a particular spot for employers looking for cheap day-laborers.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1987.18.1 |
