january 23 - Dorothea Lange Presentation

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was born in New Jersey in 1895.  She studied photography and worked in various photo studios in New York during the early stages of her career, before moving to San Francisco in 1918 and opening a portrait studio.  As the era of the Great Depression fell on the United States, Lange changed her photographic style.  Her studio portraiture shifted into shots of the homelessness and the unemployment that plagued the U.S.  Her moving photographs caught the eyes of professional photographers and landed her a job with the Federal Resettlement Administration, which later became the Farm Security Administration.

            Lange’s photographs quickly became the icons of the era.  Her shots included scenes on the poverty stricken streets and farms of the U.S.  They showed the struggles of the migrant workers and sharecroppers struggling to make a living during the depression.

Her images continued to capture attention, and in 1941 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in the photographic arts.  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lange shot many images of the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. 

            In 1945, Lange was offered a faculty position by Ansel Adams at the California School of Fine Arts.  Lange died at age 70 in 1965, but her photographs remain as reminders of the struggles that millions faced during the Great Depression.