Migratory cotton picker, the Type
Fig. 1. Dorothea Lange, Migratory cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940, printed ca. 1965, Gelatin silver print, 10 3/8 × 13 3/8 in. (26.35 × 33.97 cm)
An unflinching approach into the nature of the ambiguous subject, Dorothea Lange’s Migratory cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona (Fig. 1) documents a shared reality shaped through adversity and resilience, whereby the conditions of the photograph supersede the interior nature of the subject. As the spectator faces a scene soaked in a monotone shade of grey they are arrested by the visual weight given to the photograph’s subject. Lange takes a closeup shot of an anonymous migratory cotton picker in Eloy, Arizona, cropped from the shoulder up. The image focuses on the materiality of his face and hands. Interestingly enough, in such an intimate portrait, the palm becomes the focal point rather than the subject’s eyes. His enormous left palm covers the bottom half of his face, similar to how the bottom portion of his body from the neck down is cropped out of the photograph. The skin of the palm is weathered and worn as crisp indentations on his fingers create a series of horizontal lines throughout the composition, mirrored most prominently by the wrinkle in the center of his forehead. Along with the image’s title, the wear and tear on his fingers signifies his identity as a worker. This man is someone who has labored and toiled under the oppressive, endless void of the sky for countless years, and its remnants are permanently etched into his body.
Even though the worker confronts Lange’s camera, he resists being seen. Coupled with his palm concealing half of his face – which could have been an intentional staging choice by Lange to depersonalize the subject– his eyes are hidden underneath an impenetrable layer of shadows. The sun’s brutal rays shine down on him from the composition’s top left corner, throwing the depressions in his face in obscure shades. The horizontal band of shadows across his eyes acts as a mask where the eyes serving as windows into who he is, and thus his essence, are obscured. The viewer has no entry point in discovering more about him, his mood, personality, or even what he actually looks like. At first glance, the portrait seems intimate due to the proximity of the subject and viewer, but the longer one looks, the more distant he becomes. Lange denies the viewer the privilege to see him as a person but rather what he represents as an ideal type.
Lange positions the viewer below the laborer. As he looks down, he emits a dignified aura rooted in mystery. Because the viewer is not afforded access to the man’s personhood, the signs that point to his identity as a laborer, and thus someone of a lower socioeconomic status, are made that much more prominent. His status being innately tied to the idea of work is mirrored in the image’s title – Migratory cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona. Lange privileges the man’s status as a migratory cotton picker over his name. His name essentially becomes useless, as all that matters is his role as a laborer. Taken soon after the economic reforms of the New Deal, the image celebrates the tenacity of the American worker. Those who served as the backbone of the country in the wake of devastating economic and environmental catastrophes are finally starting to be recognized. Yet, their labor supersedes their unique, individual realities.
The image suggests who the man is is not as important as what he has been through and how he has survived. While Lange seeks to document and humanize all those who survived disasters such as the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, given the exhibition title, Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, the image becomes incredibly ironic. The viewer does not see who the worker is as a person but rather what he represents to a country in desperate need of his labor. The man is immortalized against a background that looks like a nondescript void, typical of the endless blue skies above the cotton fields in the West. Lange situates her subject against such an empty space to potentially allow the viewer to focus on the subject’s physicality and what it says about his life experiences. Not much information is given about the man, as the viewer must rely on visual clues to infer who he is and what he represents. The man is ambiguous and potentially forever unknown. But the migratory cotton picker will always represent the American spirit rooted in survival. While a noble ideal, one has to wonder how many individuals have been erased from history to propagate such an agenda.
