Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California ("A Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm laborer in California")

Throughout her extensive career Dorothea Lange photographed many faces. More often than not Lange hoped to use these specific records as a means to effect social change. Some of these faces had eyes which burned indelibily into her camera lens, for others their gaze was averted from Lange, telling their story with the turn of their body, twist of their neck. Here Lange's subject, a migrant farmer stares out into the distance, fingering the truck's steering column, his face drawn and withered with sun, exhaustion and malnourishment. We wonder about the figure at his side, most likely his wife, also gazing out contemplating the road ahead. The ambiguity of Lange's depiction leaves the viewer to tell the farmer's story; feeling his desperation and sense of dislocation. His face details the story of thousands like him uprooted from their homes in search of work and survival.