Dorothea Lange’s Country Store on Dirt Road Photo Building Still Standing at 75 Wheelers Church Road, Cedar Grove, NC
Dorothea Lange is a wonderful classic photographer just as talented as Ansel Adams. She criss crossed the United States during the 1930s documenting the poverty of the Depression in the rural South and California. Her migrant pictures are the visual companion of Steinbeck’s Fruits of Wrath. One of the most beautiful images, worth the fame of any Rockwell painting, is the Country Store on Dirt Road. It was taken on a Sunday afternoon, in July 1939. It captures not only the hard life, but also the vitality of a people much tried. The value of the picture is highlighted by the racial context of the picture, which includes both white and black subjects, and the mixture of brute misery of the building superimposed by the assault of commercial appeal.
The truly remarkable thing is that the building still exists on that same country road in North Carolina. The rough hewn cypress column are still there, as are the improbably balanced rocks that support the porch. It can even be found on Google Street View! The address is 75 Wheelers Church Rd., Cedars Grove, North Carolina.
