Table Of ContentDOROTHEA LANGE
DOROTHEA LANGE
APERTURE MASTERS
OF PHOTOGRAPHY
NUMBER
FIVE
DOROTHEA LANGE
Dorothea Lange is best known for the photographs
she madein the 1930s when sheworked for the Farm
Security Administration. It was during this time that
she photographed such powerful images as Migrant
Mother. From her documentation ofCalifornia's mi-
gratory workers who fled dust and drought on the
Great Plains and Southwest to seek a new life in the
West, tohertellingimagesofthedesperatecondition
ofthesharecroppersofthe South, shesoughttopor-
tray the social turmoil and injustice caused by the
economic upheaval ofthe time.
This volume of the Masters ofPhotoi^raphy series
presents forty-two of the greatest images from
throughout Lange's career, including some of her
work done abroad. She possessed the ability, as she
put it, to photograph "things as they arc" and
through this her photographs give us "more about
thesubjects thanjust faces." It is no wonderthat Ed-
ward Steichenoncecalled herthegreatestdocumen-
tary photographerin the United States.
In an introductory essay Christopher Cox provides
an account of the artist's life and her enduring
contribution.
APERTURE MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
DOROTHEA LANGE
Cox
With (VI Essay by Christopher
APERTURE MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
NUMBER
FIVE
The Masters of Photography Series is pubhshed by
Aperture. Dorothea Laiige is the fifth book in the series.
Copyright ©1981, 1987 Aperture Foundation Inc. All
rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. The photographs that appear
on pages 2, 19-25, 29-39, 43-49, 53-55, 59-67, 71-77,
arc reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Those appearing on the back coverand on pages 13-17,
51, 57, 79-93, are from the Dorothea Lange Collection,
The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California. Those on
the front cover and on pages 27, 41, and 69 are from
the Shirley C. Burden Collection.
Manufactured in Hong Kong by South C^hiiia Printing
Company.
Series design by Alan Richardson.
Library ofCongress Catalog Number; 87-(l7()719
ISBN: ()-89381-282-X (cloth edition)
ISBN: 0-89381-283-8 (paperback edition)
Aperture Foundation Inc. publishes a periodical, books
and portfolios offine photography to communicate with
serious photographers and creative people everywhere.
A complete catalog is available upon request. Address:
20 East 23 Street, New York, New York lOOlO.
DorotheaLange livedinstinctively, but she always dentally, disliked thelabel "documentary" applied
found herselfin the right place at the right time. to her work, but she never found a word she liked
She was a maverick. She never adopted a popular better. The question, she insisted, was less a mat-
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style,joined a movement, or worried like most ter of subject than of approach: "The important
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photographers ofher generation about the tech- thing is not what's photographed but how." She
nique and purity of the photographic process. kept the following quotation from Francis Bacon
Lange photographed spontaneously and often un- pinned to her darkroom door: "The contempla-
der difficult conditions. Shehelped us learn a great tion ofthings as they are, without error or confu-
deal about ourselves in those inspired split seconds sion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself
of photographing "things as they are," because a nobler thing than a whole harvest ofinvention."
she possessed the gift ofinquiry. As Paul Strand Born in Hoboken, NewJersey, in 1895, Lange
said, "Ifthe photographer is not a discoverer, heis was raised by her mother on the Lower East Side
not an artist. You must always see deeply into the of New York City. Her father abandoned the
reality of the world, like a Cezanne, or family when she was a child, and soon atter his
. . .
Dorothea Lange." departureshecontracted polio, which lefther with
During the Depression, Lange photographed in a lifelong limp. Shesaw herselfas an outsider. Her
almost every state ofthe union and her images are life seemed to pass between school and the public
imprinted on the mind ofa nation: an abandoned library where her mother worked. In midatter-
farmhouse in a sea oftractor furrows (page 2); a noon she would join her mother, presumably to
hoe cutter in Alabama (page 37); a damaged, study; instead she sat in the windows and watched
haunted-eyed child in Oklahoma (page 57); an ex- the busy lives ofJewish immigrant families in
slave "with a long memory"; a migrant mother neighboring tenements. Even then, as Lange later
surrounded by her hungry children (page 39). remarked, she was "acting like a photographic ob-
Lange photographed the essence ofsocial and eco- server." She could recall her child's eyefocused on
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nomic experience customs, work, and play. She significant details ofSaint Bartholomew's Church
also captured the even more intangiblepresence of on Park Avenue, in particular the expressive hands
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institutions church, government, family, politi- of the choirmaster. She taught herself to spy in-
cal organizations, and labor unions. Lange, inci- conspicuously. Walking home alone at night
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along the Bowery, she adopted an expressionless dedicated to shunning print manipulation in favor
mask, a "cloak ofinvisibility" that she cultivated ofstraightforward, unfrilled images. Soon, Lange
to good use later. was attending White's seminars at Columbia Uni-
After graduating from high school Lange stud- versity, finding in his work a "poetry and lumi-
ied tobea teacher, thenabruptly announced to her nosity" she had not seen before.
mother that she had decided to be a photographer. "Why he was extraordinary has puzzled me ev-
Shechose theprofession, she later said, simply "as er since," Lange recalled, "because he didn't do
a way to maintain myselfon the planet." Yet, she anything. 1 don't think he mentioned technique
had no camera and had never made a picture. once, how it's done, or shortcuts, or photographic
Walking along Fifth Avenue one day, Lange was manipulations. It was tohim a natural instrument.
struck by the portraits displayed in the window of I suppose he approached it something like a musi-
Arnold Genthe's fashionable studio. She walked cal instrument which you do thebest you can with
inside and asked for ajob. During the years lead- when it's in your hands."
ing up to World War I, Lange assisted Genthe in When the course ended, Lange bought a large
the darkroom and also worked as a receptionist. camera and two lenses and began to work in ear-
She found him to be a lecherous soul, but she also nest by herself. Her subjects were relatives and
recognized him as a great photographer ofwom- friends. The prints emerged from a backyard
en. "I found out there that you can photograph chicken coop that she converted into a darkroom.
what you are really involved with," she recalled. Lange always insisted that her decisions were
Genthe "loved women. He understood them. He insrinctive. In 1918, at the age oftwenty-two, she
could make the plamest woman an illuminated followed those religiously trusted instincts and left
woman." New York with a close friend to travel around the
Previously, Genthe had photographed San world. The tour was abruptly interrupted in San
Francisco's Chinatown and the aftermath of the Francisco when the two women were robbed of
1906 earthquake. But his best work was behind their traveling funds. Lange started work in the
him. He fancied himself as an innovator of the photo-finishing department ofa dry-goods store.
"candid" portrait. Younger critics, however, de- Amongher new acquaintances were thephotogra-
cried the soft-focus Pictorialist haze that infused pher Imogen Cunningham and her husband Roi
Genthe's studies. Partridge. To gain access to a darkroom, Lange
Chief among the photographers struggling to joined the San Francisco Camera Club, where she
overturn this Romantic style of imitation paint- met a wealthy young man named Jack Boum-
ings were New York avant-gardists such as Clar- phrey, who offered to finance her in opening her
ence H. White, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Kase- own portrait studio.
bier, and Alfred Stieglitz. They were among the One year after arriving in San Francisco, Lange
founders of the Photo-Secession movement opened the studio, which was an immediate sue-
——
cess. She became the favored photographer of a clothes," she said. "I thought ifthey did, the im-
circle of wealthy families who had settled in the ages would be timeless and undated. Now I feel I
Bay Area during the Gold Rush and become lead- was mistaken and think that to have any signifi-
ers ofthe city's civic and cultural life. "That place cance, most photographshzvegot tobe dated. . . .
was my life," Lange said, "and it was the center Every—thing is shut out of many prints but the
for many others." Each afternoon at four, Lange head there's no background, no sense ofplace."
lit an old brass samovar, and friends and clients Imogen Cunningham characterized those pictures
began to drop in. She greeted them in bobbed as "softened portraiture. Beautiful. But not what
hair, sandals, and a Fortuny gown, while a Chi- the people were really like."
nese-American maid and photographer's assistant In 1920 Lange married the painter Maynard
served tea and shortbread. Dixon, whom shehad met through Roi Partridge,
All of Lange's work was commissioned, and and in 1925 and 1928 she bore her two sons. Mar-
most of her photographs commemorated major riage did not immediately alter her career. Dixon
family events. In the studio, she usually kept a re- painted western scenes, and he was often away on
spectful distance from her subjects. But when she sketching trips. Lange continued to make portraits
took her camera into their homes, her work ex- in order to tree him tor his work and at the same
hibited more spontaneity. She followed children time to keep the family fed and clothed.
into backyards and posed family members against When a local reporter interviewed her as Dix-
blossoming trees, hanging vines, or sun-lashed on's "silent partner," he asked how an artist could
walls. In one ot her most moving photographs, be married to another artist. "Simple," she said.
she captured the tender gesture ofa mother lean- "Simple, that is, when an artist's wife accepts the
ing over to kiss her sleeping child in a room ob- fact that she has to contend with many things oth-
scured by shadows. Lange mounted her prints on er wives do not. Shemust first realize thather hus-
hand-madeJapanese paper with a deckle edge and band does not work solely to provide for his fami-
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signed them in a hand that became increasingly il- ly. He works for the sakeofhis work because of
legible every year. Although these portraits con- an innernecessity. To do both ofthese things suc-
tain hints ofher later documentary work, particu- cessfully, he needs a certain amount offreedom
larly in her understanding ofthe qualities and uses freedom trom the petty, personal things of life.
oflight, Lange's commercial portrait work is fair- An artist's work is great only as it approaches the
ly conventional. She labored to establish herselfas impersonal. As Maynard's wife, it is my chiefjob
a successful tradeswoman whose task was to to see that his lite does not become too involved
please her clients. that he has a clear field."
There is a timelessness in these pictures that During the 1920s, Lange began to follow newly
Lange later rejected. "I used to try to talk people developing artistic instincts. While vacationing
intohaving their pictures taken in their old, simple with Dixon and the boys in Arizona and northern
