DAY 113

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965)

SHOWING WHAT WE DID NOT SEE

Dorothea Lange made photographic history with her Depression Era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), bringing the tragic circumstance of migrant workers, displaced farm families, and sharecroppers to the attention of the government and the nation at large.

For many years, it was her mission to follow the exodus of farm families as they left the Dust Bowl and headed west to find work. She and her husband, labor economist Paul Schuster Taylor, collaborated on this project that documented rural poverty and human suffering; he provided the text, and she provided the photographs. The images were distributed in free newspapers across the country and became powerful icons of the era.

Lange was trained as a photographer in New York City but moved to San Francisco in 1918, where she opened her studio. When the Depression hit, she turned her lens toward the streets of San Francisco, documenting homelessness. This work led to her employment with the FSA. Later, she was again hired by the government (this time, the War Relocation Authority) to photograph the forced evacuation and relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Her images were so haunting, critical, and controversial that the government censored and impounded them.¹

Her empathy and compassion drove her to persist in her work of documenting the poor and the forgotten. She continued to travel the world and produce vivid documentary photo essays during the final years of her life. —GC