Jack Prewitt Professor Karlstein PHOT 107 6 May 2017 Dorothea Lange Research Paper Dorothea Lange was a photographer from the United States who became well known for her photographic journalism on farmers during the Great Depression. Before I go into detail about her work as a photographer, I will offer background to her past. Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn was born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. She was born to Heinrich Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange, second generation German immigrants who resided at 1041 Bloomfield street. Her only sibling was a younger brother named Martin.
When her father left their family when she was only 12 years old, she dropped her middle name and inherited her mother’s maiden name. At seven years of age, Dorothea contracted polio resulting in her having a debilitated right leg that would leave her with a limp for the rest of her life. Later in her life, she’d almost feel appreciative of the damage from her illness. She stated, “It was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” in addition to: “I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.
While she grew up, her parents put a large emphasis on exposing Dorothea to creative works. They were strong advocates for her education so arts and literature were large portions of Lange’s childhood. Lange would go on to graduate from Wadleigh High School for Girls and after working in a NYC photo studio, decided to pursue photography as her profession. She would study photography at Columbia University where she worked as the apprentice to several famous photographers including the leading portrait photographer, Arnold Genthe.
At this stage of her life, she had yet to develop her concept of imagery. She would come to develop it in 1918 when she moved to San Francisco with her husband, Maynard Dixon, and their two sons. To support her family, she opened a successful portrait studio there. It was while living in San Francisco that Lange began to change her focus on different aspects of photography other than portraits. She noticed the devastation that transpired in San Francisco when the Great Depression befell in the 1930’s and she recognized it as an opportunity to express the anguish of people through photography.
She began photographing labor strikes and breadlines, commonly exhibited spectacles for those that lived-in cities during the 1930’s. This initially sparked her interest in photographic journalism. Lange has a desire to travel the United States and share the story of those devastated by the economic collapse. It was also during this period that Lange would leave her husband for Paul Taylor, a university professor and labor economist. After marrying her new husband, the couple began traveling the United States to document the rural hardship they encountered for the Farm Security Administration.
The administration was created by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U. S. Agriculture Department to help farmers and farmworkers with the immense adversities that they experienced during the depression. Lange’s job was to photograph peoples who were effected severely so that the Farm Security Administration could possibly act to help these suffering people. Her husband who traveled with her wrote reports on the people that Lange photographed Of the photos that she captured while traveling, the photo Migrant Mother would come be her most renowned work.
The subject of the photo is Florence Owens Thompson and three of her children. The photograph was taken in the February of 1936 in Nipomo, California when Lange was finishing a trip photographing migrant farm workers for the Resettlement Administration. Later she would give an account of her experience capturing the photographs: “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet… 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 that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. ” Lange had used a Graflex camera which produced 4×5 negative photographs to capture the image. Since Lange was contracted by the Resettlement Administration, the photograph is owned by the administration so there are no known restrictions on the use of “Migrant Mother” images.
The image would make Lange the first female recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship and to this day, the photograph hangs in the Library of Congress. After working for the Resettlement Administration, Lange was employed by the Office of War Information (OWL). Her assignment was to photograph the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Japanese internment had been a heated topic in the past with many regarding it as inhumane. Lange was tasked with photographing the internment camps to make an unbiased survey of the treatment of Japanese Americans for OWL.
Her photographs worked to assure OWL and the public of the wellbeing of interned Japanese Americans. Some of her photographs were so controversial that the Army impounded some of them for more than 50 years. Again, many of the photographs that she captured of the camps have no restriction on use since Lange was contracted by OWL. In 1945, Lange was offered a position at the California School of Fine Arts by Ansel Adams. She accepted the invitation as well as Imogen Cunningham and Minor White, other highly regarded photographers.
While working in the school’s fine art photography department, she helped found the small publishing house and photographic magazine Aperture which still exists today. The company produced high-end photography books and monthly periodicals that would frequently feature Lange’s work. In 1952, Lange and Pirkle Jones were commissioned by Life magazine to photograph residents of Monticello, California who were displaced by the damming of the Putah Creek. The Dam resulted in all vegetation in the valley being chopped down and buildings demolished to make way for the new water project.
Because the water project was so controversial, Life Magazine decided to not run the piece. In defiance, Aperture magazine devoted a whole issue to the photojournalism on Monticello. Lange would die of esophageal cancer in 1965. Lange’s style of photography was unique to the fact that she attempted to provoke society to correct the injustices she documented. You can detect this as her motive because the topics her work consisted of tended to be controversial. There are other photographers who shared a similar motive with Dorothea Lange.
Most notably, the other 10 photographers that the Farm Security Administration hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. The photographers were: Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, and Marion Post Wolcott. Before I got into detail in how Lange’s work contrasts the work of these similar photographers, I will detail the unique characteristics of her work. First, her documentary photographs would incorporate dynamic compositions and dramatic angles. These aspects created images that allowed the viewer to appreciate the subjects plight.
This worked in her favor by inducing feelings of grief for the subject in viewers of her photos. In addition, her photos proved that works of art and journalism were not mutually limited. She achieved this by creating work that combined both to create beautiful and moving photographs. Lastly, she endeavored to create art that informed the public of suffering of people far away in order to create social change. Her efforts in creating social change show that she considered herself as more of a journalist than a photographer.
Other photographers from this period shared similar motives with Dorothea Lange. Since the Great Depression was such a large aspect of life in the 1930’s, most photographer captured photos depicting social injustice and economic hardship. Photos from this period meant to create awareness for social issues usually depicted scenes that the photographer did not interfere with, but rather showed the raw devastation of a subject. Dorothea Lange and other FSA photographers would achieve this by traveling areas that were economically burdened and captured disheartening scenes that they encountered.
In my opinion, I believe her work is brilliant. She successfully communicates feelings of anguish and depression through her documentary photography. Every photo that she captured has multiple meanings. While the scene depicted in the photograph is striking, the images contain an ulterior motive meant to inform viewers of devastation from people far away. In retrospect, Dorotha Lange helped pioneer the field of photojournalism. She established an art where photography is used to add another aspect to a story making it more personable.
