Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, born on May 26, 1895, and passed away on October 11, 1965. She is best known for her powerful photographs taken during the Great Depression. Her work helped people understand the hard times many families faced.

Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration, taking pictures that showed the real struggles of everyday people. Her photographs told important stories about life during difficult times and changed how people thought about documentary photography. Through her camera, she showed the world the strength and challenges of those affected by the Great Depression.

Early life

Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to parents who came from Germany. She had a younger brother named Martin. When she was seven, she got a disease called polio, which made her right leg weaker and gave her a lasting limp. This experience shaped who she became.

When she was twelve, her father left the family, and they moved to a less wealthy area in New York City. She grew up in Manhattan's Lower East Side, attending PS 62 on Hester Street, where she was one of the few non-Jewish students in her class. While her mother worked, she explored the streets, watching people from a distance. This helped her learn how to observe others carefully, a skill that would later become important in her work as a photographer.

Career

Lange finished school at the Wadleigh High School for Girls in New York City and decided she wanted to be a photographer. She studied at Columbia University with a teacher named Clarence H. White and learned from several photography studios in New York.

In 1918, Lange moved to San Francisco after her travel plans were interrupted. She worked in a photography shop and later opened her own portrait studio, which helped support her family. When the Great Depression began, she started taking photos of people struggling on the streets instead of portraits.

Lange’s photos of people affected by the Depression caught attention and led to her work for government agencies. Her pictures showed the hard lives of many families who had lost jobs and homes. One famous photo, called Migrant Mother, helped bring aid to a camp of people in need. Her work showed the real struggles of everyday people during a difficult time.

Lange later married economist Paul Schuster Taylor, and they traveled together, documenting poverty and the lives of workers. Her photographs made people aware of the difficulties faced by many during the 1930s.

In 1941, Lange received a special award for photography but chose to document the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. Her photos showed families waiting to leave their homes, capturing their feelings of uncertainty and loss. Many of these photos were not seen by the public at the time but are important today.

In 1945, Lange began teaching photography at the California School of Fine Arts, now called the San Francisco Art Institute, along with other famous photographers.

Aperture and Life

In 1952, Lange helped start a photography magazine called Aperture. A few years later, Life magazine asked Lange and Pirkle Jones to photograph a town in Monticello, California that was disappearing because a dam was being built on Putah Creek to create Lake Berryessa. Even though Life magazine decided not to publish these photos, Lange used them for an entire issue of Aperture. This work was later displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960.

Lange also worked on another project for Life magazine starting in 1954. This project focused on how people with limited money were treated in court. Her interest in this topic came partly from her brother’s experience when he was arrested and went to trial.

Death and legacy

Dorothea Lange's health got worse in the last years of her life. She passed away from a sickness of the throat on October 11, 1965, in San Francisco, at the age of seventy. She is remembered for her important work.

After she passed away, a big art place in New York showed many of her photos. In 2020, they showed her work again and talked about how her pictures told important stories about history. Over the years, she was honored in many places and schools were even named after her. Her pictures helped people remember hard times and important moments in history.

Art market

In May 2023, an art event in New York sold a big, old photograph called Migrant Mother for much more money than people thought it would.

Collections

Dorothea Lange's photographs are kept in many famous places around the world. Some of these places include the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and the Oakland Museum of California.