Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on May 26, 1895, Dorothea Lange was a prominent American photographer, photojournalist, and documentary photographer known for her powerful images that captured the human condition during the Great Depression and World War II.
At a young age, Dorothea was fascinated by the variety of people she saw while wondering the streets of New York, a trait she would use as a documentary photographer. After graduating from high school, she began her study of photography at Columbia University under Clarence H. White. She would later get apprenticeships with several New York photography studies, including that of Arnold Genthe.
Dorothea settled in San Francisco after her plans to travel the world was disrupted, in 1918. She found a job in a photographic supply shot and became acquainted with other photographers.
Her early studio work mostly involved shooting portrait photographs of San Francisco's social elite. She shifted her interest to documentary photography in the 1930s. Dorothea began to photograph the lives of farmers and migrant workers affected by the economic crisis.
During the Great Depression, millions of people in the United States were jobless. Some 300,000 people migrated west to California, hoping to find work. Unfortunately, work was hard to find in California.
Dorothea captured the attention of local photographers and media for her documentary photography of the unemployed, poverty, and homeless. This led her to be employed with the Farm Security Administration.
One of Dorothea's most recognized photograph is Migrant Mother, which became an iconic symbol of the Great Depression. As she would later write about the photograph in Popular Photography, "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother [Florence Owens Thompson], as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions... She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in the lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."
In 1941, Dorothea was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for achievement in photography; however, she gave up the fellowship to go on assignment for the War Relocation Authority to document the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. One permanent internment camp she documented was Manzanar, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated. Many of her photographs were seized by the military, and weren't released until 2006.
Dorothea's photographs were not only important for their historical value, but also for their artistic merit. She had a keen eye for composition and was able to capture the humanity of her subjects in a way that was both intimate and universal.
In 1984, she was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936)
White Angel Breadline (1933)
April 20, 1942
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dorothea-Lange
https://anchoreditions.com/blog/dorothea-lange-censored-photographs
whf c. ai (30%)
No comments:
Post a Comment