BIOGRAPHY
From 1914 to 1917, Dorothea Lange attended the New York Training School for Teachers, and there decided to become a photographer. From 1917 to 1918, she honed her skill by attending a photography course run by Clarence H. White at Columbia University. Lange eventually moved to San Francisco in 1918, setting up a successful portrait studio where she crafted works such as Clayburgh Children, San Francisco (1924). In the late 1920s, however, Lange became dissatisfied with studio work and experimented with landscape and plant photography, though she found the results unsatisfactory.
The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression led Lange to search for subjects outside her studio. Turning to the effects of the economic decline, she took photographs such as General Strike, San Francisco (1934). She had her first solo show at the Brockhurst Studio of Willard Van Dyke in Oakland, CA (1934), and in the same year met the economist Paul Schuster Taylor, under whom she worked for the California State Emergency Relief Administration in 1935. Later that year, she transferred to the Resettlement Administration, set up to deal with the problem and complexities of the migration of agricultural workers. She continued to work for this body through its various transformations (including its time as the Farm Security Administration), until the early 1940s. One of her most famous photographs from this project is Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936), which depicts an anxious, distracted mother and three of her children. In 1939, in collaboration with Taylor (who provided the text, which included oral testimonies), she published An American Exodus. This masterpiece of the documentary genre was a summation of Lange and Taylor's concern with the social and cultural issues of the Dust Bowl and westward migration.
In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and this allowed her to take a series of photographs of religious groups in the USA, such as those of the Amish (1941). After an illness which prevented her from working during the late 1940s, she produced photographs of the Mormons and of rural life in Ireland for articles in Life magazine in the 1950s. Later, she worked with Taylor in East Asia and South America, eventually working in Egypt and the Middle East. Here, she produced such photographs as Procession Bearing Food to the Dead, Upper Egypt (1963) in the detached, documentary style that characterizes all her work.
From 1914 to 1917, Dorothea Lange attended the New York Training School for Teachers, and there decided to become a photographer. From 1917 to 1918, she honed her skill by attending a photography course run by Clarence H. White at Columbia University. Lange eventually moved to San Francisco in 1918, setting up a successful portrait studio where she crafted works such as Clayburgh Children, San Francisco (1924). In the late 1920s, however, Lange became dissatisfied with studio work and experimented with landscape and plant photography, though she found the results unsatisfactory.
The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression led Lange to search for subjects outside her studio. Turning to the effects of the economic decline, she took photographs such as General Strike, San Francisco (1934). She had her first solo show at the Brockhurst Studio of Willard Van Dyke in Oakland, CA (1934), and in the same year met the economist Paul Schuster Taylor, under whom she worked for the California State Emergency Relief Administration in 1935. Later that year, she transferred to the Resettlement Administration, set up to deal with the problem and complexities of the migration of agricultural workers. She continued to work for this body through its various transformations (including its time as the Farm Security Administration), until the early 1940s. One of her most famous photographs from this project is Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936), which depicts an anxious, distracted mother and three of her children. In 1939, in collaboration with Taylor (who provided the text, which included oral testimonies), she published An American Exodus. This masterpiece of the documentary genre was a summation of Lange and Taylor's concern with the social and cultural issues of the Dust Bowl and westward migration.
In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and this allowed her to take a series of photographs of religious groups in the USA, such as those of the Amish (1941). After an illness which prevented her from working during the late 1940s, she produced photographs of the Mormons and of rural life in Ireland for articles in Life magazine in the 1950s. Later, she worked with Taylor in East Asia and South America, eventually working in Egypt and the Middle East. Here, she produced such photographs as Procession Bearing Food to the Dead, Upper Egypt (1963) in the detached, documentary style that characterizes all her work.
REFERENCES
Biography adapted from "Lange, Dorothea." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T049131>.
Artwork behind title: Dorothea Lange's Tractored Out, Childress County, Texas (detail)
Artwork behind title: Dorothea Lange's Tractored Out, Childress County, Texas (detail)
