© The Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California
Currently not on view
White Angel Breadline,
1933, printed ca. 1950s
Dorothea Lange, 1895–1965; born Hoboken, NJ; died San Francisco, CA; active San Francisco, CA
2019-2
White Angel Breadline is Lange’s first photographic effort undertaken outside the comfort of her San Francisco studio, an exercise that helped cultivate the style that would inform her later work for the federal government. The view she captured, of hungry and unemployed men lined up outside a soup kitchen, was a familiar one in American cities during the Great Depression. The particular food bank, known as the White Angel Jungle, was very close to her studio. Lange’s tightly cropped image became an icon of the period, capturing the prevalence of human isolation and despair.
Information
Title
White Angel Breadline
Dates
1933, printed ca. 1950s
Maker
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 34.1 × 26.4 cm (13 7/16 × 10 3/8 in.)
sheet: 35.4 × 27.6 cm (13 15/16 × 10 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2019-2
Place Depicted
North America, United States, California, San Francisco
Culture
Techniques
Subject
The artist; [Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, NY]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 2019.
