Plantation Overseer and his Field Hands, Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta, 1936
Dorothea Lange
Film negative
Gift of Paul S. Taylor
5 in x 4 in
A67.137.38181.5
© The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California.
Additional Information
As a government employee, Lange lost control over how other people used her photographs. In his book, Land of the Free, writer Archibald MacLeish cropped the Black sharecroppers out of this image. By doi
As a government employee, Lange lost control over how other people used her photographs. In his book, Land of the Free, writer Archibald MacLeish cropped the Black sharecroppers out of this image. By doing so, he changed Lange’s intended subject. Instead of a study of race and power, we see an image of the overseer as a noble, self-reliant American farmer.
