black & white: Dorothea Lange

Quick facts:

Born on May 26^th, 1895 in Hoboken, NJ. Daughter of German immigrants.

Contracted polio when she was 7 years old, leaving her with a permanent limp. Of her limp, she said, “it formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me”.

Lived to be 70 years old (died of cancer on October 11^th, 1965 in Berkeley, CA).

Married to the painter Maynard Dixon. Divorced, then remarried to Paul Schuster Taylor, an agricultural economist and sociologist.

Specialized in documentary photography and photojournalism.

Best known for her work during the Great Depression (1930s).

Lange’s start:

Took a photography class with Clarence White at Columbia University in the early 1900s.

Was an apprentice in several photography studios while still in New York.

Got her professional start by opening a portrait studio in San Francisco.

After coming to San Francisco, she joined a camera club in which she met Consuelo Kanaga. He was a controversial photojournalist who influenced Lange’s work.

Though the portrait studio was successful, it came to an end when the Great Depression struck. Thus, the Great Depression led her to turn her lens to capture the unemployed and homeless, therefore focusing on social realism.

Some of her work was produced for the Farm Security Administration. She was hired expressly to make visible the terrible rural conditions of this time period. Her goal was to turn attention to those who had been forgotten.

Along with her agricultural economist/sociologist husband, she turned a critical eye on the exploitation and misery of agricultural workers and the impoverished. Lange accompanied him on his trips to study migrant workers. He wrote while she photographed. Taylor educated Lange on political and social issues of the time.

During the Second World War she was hired by the government to document the Japanese-American interment camps. She proposed to bring their struggle into the public eye. However, this work was not shown until years later due to the controversial nature of the subject.

Later, Lange worked occasionally for Life Magazine. She also taught at the California School of Fine Arts and started a photography magazine called Aperture. Lange spent time traveling the world and photographing people from different regions and cultures.

To this day, she is best known for capturing the suffering of the Great Depression era.

Quotes:

"I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were--their pride, their strength, their spirit."

"One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I've only touched it, just touched it."

Photos:

Best known photograph- "Migrant Mother" 1936