Childress County, Texas

Dorothea Lange

1938 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Between 1935 and 1942, Lange worked for the photographic unit of the Farm Security Administration, photographing migrant workers, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and other victims of the Depression, primarily in the South and West. In 1939 she and her husband, the historian Paul S. Taylor, published An American Exodus, a book documenting the migration of thousands of farmers and laborers from the dust bowls of the South to California's fertile valleys. They included this image of a farmhouse surrounded by machine-furrowed fields, with the caption: "Tractors replace not only mules, but people. They cultivate to the very door of the houses of those whom they replace."

Artist

Dorothea Lange

Date

1938

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987