Dorothea Lange

the photographer's Resettlement Administration credit stamp and the Resettlement Administration number in pencil on the reverse, hinged to a modern mount, 1936

Acquired from PhotoWest Gallery, San Diego, 1990

Other prints of this image:

Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (New York, 2009), p. 222

Howard M. Levin and Katherine Northrup, From the Library of Congress:  Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935 - 1939, Volume I (Glencoe, 1980), p. 140, fig. 2-74

Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Orange Empire:  California and the Fruits of Eden (Berkeley, 2005), p. 243

Michael Lesy, A Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935 - 1943 (New York, 2002), p. 347 (another image of these subjects)

This early, slightly warm-toned print, on paper with a surface sheen, is in generally excellent condition. The edges are slightly rubbed, and the corners are bumped. There is a very small (about 1/8-inch) crease that appears to break the emulsion at the lower left edge of the image. The Resettlement Administration number on the reverse of the print is extremely faint.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The photograph offered here shows a father and son in Porterville, Tulare County, in California's San Joaquin Valley.  A center of citrus cultivation since the 1880s, Tulare County was an important part of the state's 'Orange Empire,' which drew immigrants from Asia, Mexico, and southern Europe, as well as other parts of the United States.   Dorothea Lange photographed in California's citrus camps throughout the years 1936 to 1939, showing the camps, the people, and the packing houses, upon which much of the state's economy depended. 

The present image reflects the decency and courage that Lange saw in many of her subjects, despite the hardships they encountered.  Douglas Sackman, in his Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden, where this image is reproduced, calls this photograph a 'message of potential redemption' (p. 242), one in which the whole countenance of the man signals determination and hope.  But as Linda Gordon observes in her recent biography of Lange, where this image is also reproduced, photographs of fathers and children without mothers—like Lange's pictures of mothers and children without fathers—document the shifts and subtle changes taking place in segments of American society at that time.  The splintering of the traditional nuclear family, one facet of the 'human erosion' charted by Lange and Paul Taylor in their work, is a subtext of the famous Migrant Mother, as well as the photograph offered here.  Lange's sensitivity to her sitters, and the new world many faced as single parents, are seen by Gordon as 'one of several indications that Lange's visual sensibility picked up new democratic possibilities that many did not yet sense' (Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, p. 220). 

Prints of the present image are scarce.  The Resettlement Administration stamp on the reverse of the photograph confirms that this is an early print.