Young sharecropper and his first child. Hillside Farm. Person County, North Carolina, 1939
"...young Negro couple and baby. ...The man was shy of having his photograph made but finally held the baby in front of the house for one picture.
Young sharecropper and his first child. Hillside Farm. Person County, North Carolina, 1939
Photography by Dorothea Lange
Source: LOC
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Lange provided detailed "General Captions" for many of her photos. This portrait of the sharecropper and his child is part of a series the she did on this family and the land that they worked. The General Caption for the series reads, in part:
"...young Negro couple and baby. ...The man was shy of having his photograph made but finally held the baby in front of the house for one picture.
They have just moved here this year--'They treat us better here than where we did live....'
The woman had been through seventh grade, the husband not much education. She would not let us take pictures of the interior--'Ain't cleaned up in ever so long....' ...[the family] had to get water from 'the spring' so far away that the man was gone about 20 minutes to get a bucket of water."
(From Anne Whiston Spirn's fascinating book about Lange's field work, Daring to Look.)