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DOROTHEA LANGE | PHOTOGRAPHY
Upon a visit to the Getty Center in Los Angeles Center recently, I acquired these two monographs in a series of famous photographers. Such fine publications by Aperture, I could not resist buying them.
Dorothea Lange (b.26May1895 – d.11Oct1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.
The book includes an introduction and commentary by Linda Gordon.
It had been a while since I've read of this fine photographer, good to revive the biography in this handsome edition; how Lange suffered from polio aged 7, emerging with a wizened lower leg and cramped foot - it certainly did not slow her down. Her parents' seperation made her so angry, aged 13
she was, she adopted her mother's maiden name, Lange.
Lange made a career for herself in photography and married
a popular artist, Maynard Dixon. She workied diligently in her studio and developed herf own style in portraiture.
When theDepression hot in the 1930s and the streets were teeming with the hungry, the homeless, the destitute and the angry, she found her studio stifling and suffocating; she had to go out into the streets and became fascinated with photo documentary. She became a streetphotographer.
By a turn of events, she accepted a job for the government and a profesor of economics, Paul Schuster
Taylor, became fascinated by her photography, they met and fell in love. Lange divorced her arty and unfaithful husband and married Taylor.
Taylor landed her a job with a new project for the Farm Security Administration, a chapter in her life that is well documented.
One of the two photos I have included is a less famous photo by her, but the look of desperate craziness
of the husband behind the wheel and the tearful eyes of his wife, beyond hope, is so striking to me.
The other photo I included is because of Lange's anti-racism photography. I very much liked this photo
of a black woman, because of the strength against all odds this woman shows.
Her anti-racism particularly showed when, in 1942, the US War Relocation Authority hired the wartime internment of Japanese Americans. Influenced by Taylor's conviction that the internment was unnecessary and unconstitutional, she made very critical photographs.When the US Army brass saw her photographs, they fired her and impounded the photos for the durations of the war. It is small wonder why Americans have an inbred distrust against her federal government, it continues to repress, lie and falsify facts.
The photos Lange made of the Japanese internment in the USA did not get published until 2006 in Imponded, Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment.
She produced An American Exodus in a collaboration project with her husband Paul Taylor (the publication was lost in the outbreak of WW2), Lange also worked with Ansel Adams, she focussed on documentary series rather than single photos, continued her work for Life magazine (a strained relation) and travelled extensively in the late-1950s and early-1960s. This last chapter is less known, she visited South Korea, Vietnam, Palestine and Egypt.
Her work and travel, long roadtrips in the US and her foreign exploits, was complicated because of bouts with illness such as ulcers, post-polio syndrome and, finally, esophageal cancer. Her drive and productivity is nothing short of admirable.
Dorothea Lange steeled herself in her final years with designing in every detail her exhibition, with help of curator John Szarkowski, in the MoMA; she lived long enough to prepare the exhibit, but died before the opening.
en.wikipedia.org:_Dorothea_Lange
[.....2018]
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