Dorothea
Lange’s moving portrait of Nettie Featherston, slender and destitute against
the backdrop of the Texas high plains, is emblematic of the era’s depleted
land, bodies, and spirits. Nettie’s solitary despair, like the uncaring
landscape that surrounds her, is inescapable. From 1935 to 1939, Lange worked
for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration, tasked with recording
the lives of Americans hit hardest by the double punch of the Great Depression
and the Dust Bowl. Printed under Lange’s supervision shortly before her death
in 1965, this monumentally sized print was produced for her solo exhibition at
New York’s Museum of Modern Art.