Toward Los Angeles, Calif.
Artist
Dorothea Lange
(1895 - 1965)
Date1937, printed 2005
MediumGelatin silver print
Dimensions7 3/4 x 8 in.
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number2005.180
DescriptionIntegral to American identity is the notion that the United States is a nation of people on the move: to seek fortune or fame, to shed one identity for another, to live on one's own terms. "Toward Los Angeles, California" (pl.16) ironically exposes the often-cruel reality of that belief. Two men walking down a deserted road, their dark-clothed bodies sharply puncturing the lightly clouded sky behind them, form vertical counterpoints to the expansive billboard on the right, its advertisement for rail travel dominated by a neatly suited figure at ease in a reclining coach chair. The ad's words evoke a pre-Great Depression era of prosperity and choice unthinkable to the two migrant workers walking the road to Los Angeles: without work, there is no alternative mode of travel for them and their minds cannot rest easily.Lange tried to balance despair and hope in her photographs while satisfying personal aesthetic goals, always conscious that the purpose of her FSA work was to educate Americans about the conditions of rural poverty and persuade them to support government programs for the poor.(3) Although victims of economic circumstances beyond their control, these men they have not succumbed to hopelessness; they navigate the open road, agents as much as possible of their own lives.
N.N.
NOTES:
3. Sally A. Stein, in Keith Davis et al., "Future Evidence: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange," Judith Keller, "Dorothea Lange: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum" (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), p. 109.
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