Harrowing a 2,000 acre wheat field which is allowed to fallow alternate years. Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County, California
May 1937
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 18.9 × 24.4 cm (7 7/16 × 9 5/8 in.) sheet: 20.6 × 25.5 cm (8 1/8 × 10 1/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Accession Number
2016.191.85
Art Historical Context
In May 1937, Dorothea Lange captured *Harrowing a 2,000 acre wheat field is allowed to fallow years. Antelope Valley Los Angeles County, California a poignant gelatin silver print that exemplifies her mastery of documentary photography. Lange, renowned for her work with the Farm Security Administration (FSA during the Great Depression, her lens on America's rural heartland, revealing the grit and resilience of agricultural life. This image depicts a vast field being harrowed—plowed to break up soil—in California's Antelope Valley, highlighting sustainable farming practices like biennial fallow...
About the Artist
Dorothea Lange · 1895–1965
Dorothea Lange, born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey, overcame significant personal challenges to become one of America's most influential documentary photographers. Stricken with polio at age seven, she developed a lifelong limp that she credited with shaping her empathetic worldview, famously stating it "formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and hum...