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Dorothea Lange: Iconic Depression Photographer

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer best known for her Depression-era photos for the Farm Security Administration that humanized the consequences of the Great Depression. She was born in 1895 in New Jersey to German immigrants and adopted her mother's maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12. She graduated from high school determined to become a photographer and studied photography at Columbia University. Later she taught photography at the California School of Fine Arts and co-founded the photography magazine Aperture. Her most famous photo was "Migrant Mother" from 1936. Lange died in 1965 while suffering from health problems.

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93 views2 pages

Dorothea Lange: Iconic Depression Photographer

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer best known for her Depression-era photos for the Farm Security Administration that humanized the consequences of the Great Depression. She was born in 1895 in New Jersey to German immigrants and adopted her mother's maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12. She graduated from high school determined to become a photographer and studied photography at Columbia University. Later she taught photography at the California School of Fine Arts and co-founded the photography magazine Aperture. Her most famous photo was "Migrant Mother" from 1936. Lange died in 1965 while suffering from health problems.

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Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photo journalist, best known for her

Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Lange’s photographs humanized

the consequences of the Great development of documentary photography.

Dorothea Lange was born on May 26, 1895, at 1041 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, New Jersey to second-

generation German immigrants Heinrish Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange. She had a younger brother,

Matin. She dropped her middle name and assumed her mother’s maiden name after her father

abandoned the family when she was 12 years old, one of two traumatic incidents early in her life. Lange

always said, “It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” or I’ve never

gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it,” with all of the stuff that was going on in her

life.

Lange graduated from the Wadleigh high School for Girls, and although she had never operated or

owned a camera, she was adamant that she would become a photographer upon graduating high

school. Lange was educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City, in a class taught by

Clarence H. White.

In 1945, Lange was invited by Ansel Adams to accept a position as faculty at the first fine art

photography department at the California School of Fine Arts, now known as San Francisco Art Institute.

In 1952, she co- founded the photographic magazine Aperture. Lange and Pirkle Jones were

commissioned in the mid-1950s to shoot a photographic documentary for Life magazine of the death of

Monticello, California and of the displacement of its residents by the damming of Prutah Creel to form

Lake Berryessa. The last few years Lange health was poor. She suffered from gastric problems as well as

pos-polio syndrome although this renewal of the pain weakness of polio was not yet recognized by the

most physicians. Dorothea Lange died on October 11, 1965.


Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936)
Probably the most famous of Lange’s photographs, the
description she wrote of her encounter with Florence Owens
Thompson reveals that it left a deep impression on her.
- -San Francisco History Room, San Francisco public Library

Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California


In this picture, lange is able to capture a striking look of anxiety
on the face of her subject. Stranded in his car, the man’s plight
suggests the larger problems that society faced during the Great
Depression. To add to the feeling of claustrophobia, Lange has
caught his as if unawares, an effect which persuades us all the
more of the truth of the image
- The Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of
California

The White Angel Breadline (1933)


One of the Lange’s better -known photographs, she often cited
this particular scene when speaking about her breakthrough into
documentary photography. “The discrepancy between what I was
working on in the printing frames and what was going on in the
street was more than I could assimilate”. Drawn to the lines of
people waiting for food at the soup kitchen embodies the
depressed mood of the time. The camera focuses on the man’s hat
and face, which show an exploration of texture through
comparison of the rough material and wrinkles of the hat.
- San Francisco museum of modern art

Pictures and information gathered at http://www.theartstory.org

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