May Day, San Francisco, California

1934, printed c. 1960s

Dorothea Lange

Associated Names
Dorothea Lange

Artist, American, 1895 - 1965

The image shows a woman from the waist up, with her body turned slightly to the left as she looks upwards. She has short, curly hair peeking out from under a round-brimmed hat. Her facial features are soft, with a focus on her expressive eyes as they gaze upward. She wears a dark coat over a lighter top and holds a folded newspaper titled "MAY DAY." Around her wrist is a bracelet. In the background, there are other people standing close by, some partly visible and wearing hats, all with a blurred appearance, suggesting they are part of a crowd under an overcast sky.
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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Dorothea Lange, Berkeley, CA; private collection, New York; (Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York); Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, Van Nuys, CA, 20 October 2009; gift to NGA, 2016.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2023

  • Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, 2023 - 2024, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1978

  • Heyman, Therese Thau, and The Oakland Museum. Celebrating a Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange. Oakland, 1978: 47.

1982

  • Hoffman, Michael E., ed. Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime. New York, 1982: 53.

2002

  • Borhan, Pierre. Dorothea Lange, the Heart and Mind of a Photographer. Boston, 2002: 76.

2013

  • Partridge, Elizabeth. Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning: Her Lifetime in Photography. San Francisco, 2013: 55.

Inscriptions

on verso, center stamped in black ink: PHOTOGRAPH BY / DOROTHEA LANGE / 1163 EUCLID AVENUE / BERKELEY / CALIFORNIA; by unknown hand, bottom center in graphite: DLA-00072-SP; bottom right corner: DL-C-ILL-107

Wikidata ID

Q64146817

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