Dorothea langes biography

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She enrolled Dorothea in a school near her work. Many wealthy San Francisco residents came to her for artistic portraits. What is particularly powerful about this iconic image? What does it tell viewers about the Great Depression?

  • Dorothea was not the only artist of the Great Depression to advocate for democracy through her work.

    It was not a coincidence that Dorothea captured so many different types of Americans. Lange used this concept later in life, where photographs reveal the extraordinary within the average working American.

    Lange settled in San Francisco in 1918. Rather than suggesting he pose, Lange has caught him as if unawares, an effect which persuades us all the more of the truth of the image.

    The Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of California

    • 1936

    Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California

    Probably the most famous of Lange's photographs, the description she wrote of her encounter with Florence Owens Thompson reveals that it left a deep impression on her.

    White was influenced by the Pictorialist style of photography, which cultivated many of the effects of fine painting, but he also encouraged his students to individualize their pictures by developing a unique point of view, and his assignments often involved photographing everyday subjects to truly see them. "The discrepancy between what I was working on in the printing frames and what was going on in the streets was more than I could assimilate".

    She also accompanied her husband on his work-related assignments in Pakistan, Korea and Vietnam, among other places, documenting what she saw along the way.

    dorothea langes biography

    She felt separated from real Americans who were struggling every day. She co-founded Aperture, a small publishing house that produces a periodical and high-end photography books. Abandoning wide-angle landscape views, she reverted to practices used in her studio and asked the workers to share their stories. Eventually they separated.

    Stranded in his car, the man's plight suggests the larger problems that society faced during the Great Depression. She told me her age, that she was 32. Her parents were both strong advocates for her education, and exposure to creative works filled her childhood.

    Following high school, she attended the New York Training School for Teachers in 1913. They never overpower the subjects themselves, but instead subtly direct the viewer to a fresh appreciation of the individual's plight.

  • Lange's mature work proved that works of art and documents are not mutually exclusive, and that they can combine to produce beautiful, moving, and campaigning images.

    What does this tell you about her personality?

    • Suggested Activities

    • APUSH Connection: 7.9: The Great Depression
    • View some of Dorothea’s images of sharecroppers. In the 1950s, she began to reflect on her career and comment on the changing field of photography.

      Lange passed away from esophageal cancer in October 1965.

      • Name: Dorothea Lange
      • Birth Year: 1895
      • Birth date: May 26, 1895
      • Birth State: New Jersey
      • Birth City: Hoboken
      • Birth Country: United States
      • Gender: Female
      • Best Known For: Dorothea Lange was a photographer whose portraits of displaced farmers during the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary photography.
      • Industries
      • Astrological Sign: Gemini
      • Schools
      • Death Year: 1965
      • Death date: October 11, 1965
      • Death State: California
      • Death City: San Franciso
      • Death Country: United States

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      • Article Title: Dorothea Lange Biography
      • Author: Biography.com Editors
      • Website Name: The Biography.com website
      • Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/dorothea-lange
      • Access Date:
      • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
      • Last Updated: June 16, 2020
      • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
      • One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.

    Life Story: Dorothea Lange, 1895–1965

    Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration photographer, in California

    Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration photographer, in California, Feb.

    1936, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

    Dorothea Nutzhorn was born in 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. They traveled and appeared at society events together. Dorothea spent months reviewing a career’s worth of photographs and reflecting on her life. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

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    The commission came from the government, yet the resulting photographs threatened to be so controversial that they were impounded for the duration of the war and Lange was not able to see them until twenty years later.