Getty Museum
Tom Mooney, May 1933 (San Quentin)
Creator
Dorothea LangeAmerican Photographer · 1895–1965
All works by this person →Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, to first-generation German Americans, Dorothea Lange was stricken at age seven with polio, which left her right leg and foot disfigured. Her father abandoned the family when she was twelve. After high school, she apprenticed with portrait photographer Arnold Genthe in Manhattan and studied with Clarence H. White at Columbia University’s Teacher’s Coll
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- May 1933
- Medium
- Toned gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- e86886c7-dedc-48d9-9d4d-03dac15fc84a
From LinkedCulture
This is Tom Mooney, photographed inside San Quentin State Prison in May 1933, by a then little-known Dorothea Lange. He wears a plain white prison shirt, his face half-lit against a dark background, those deep-set eyes carrying what can only be described as tired but undefeated gravity. Mooney had already served seventeen years for a bombing he almost certainly did not commit. This portrait matters because it shows Lange's earliest commitment to photography as witness, long before her Depression-era work made her iconic.
Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.
From the Getty Museum record
A portrait of political activist Tom Mooney taken inside San Quentin State Prison.
The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
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