Although Bourke-White also photographed drought victims of the Dust Bowl, it is Dorothea Lange we associate with the classic pictures from this time. Following our discussion of Hine and Bourke-White and after our exposure to their work, we will delve into a study of Dorothea Lange, whose life work shared their "social documentary" style.
Like them, Lange used images to draw national attention to the plight of the underprivileged and dispossessed. Her most famous photographs are of migrant workers and tenant farmers in rural areas of the United States during the Depression Era. Her photograph,
Migrant Mother
, discussed earlier, is the most famous example of this work.
Dorothea Lange studied photography at Columbia University in New York. She began her career, however, as a portrait photographer in San Francisco, but was so affected by the number of homeless in the area that she changed her focus and began to use her skill to draw attention to this problem.
Like Hine, Lange also suffered tragedy when she was young. She was born in New Jersey in 1895. When she was seven she contracted polio and it left her with a limp. The neighborhood children made fun of her and even her mother was apparently embarrassed by her. When she was twelve, her father walked out on her family and they never heard from him again. These two events traumatized her and probably served as the impetus and left her with the amazing sense of empathy that she has in her work. Bored by school and disillusioned by life she often cut class and walked around the lower east side of Manhattan, taking photographs of people, thus beginning her life long ability to meet and connect with people while taking their picture.
One of the best known works,
The White Angel Breadline, (
www.masters-of-photography.com/Lange) she took while walking around San Francisco in 1933. It is considered one of her street photos. It is of a group of men in a bread line waiting in line for some food. It prefigures Bourke-White's photo of the Louisville flood. The men are waiting to bring food home to their families, but one man, only one, has his back to the other men. He is the only one looking away from the end of the line. He is wearing a light hat and our eyes are drawn to it. He is resting his hands on the fence that blocks all of them in and he is cradling a cup of water, perhaps coffee. His hat is over his eyes but he is looking slightly downward and in no hurry, although he is dirty and probably starving.
During the Depression the government created The Farm Security Administration (FSA) to give work to writers and other artists asking them to document the era. Lange was able to get a position with them. She decided to travel to the south and take pictures of out of work sharecroppers. She went to Oklahoma to take pictures of the disenfranchised people from the dust bowl, and traveled through California meeting and photographing migrant laborers. Lange had no trouble walking into camps, where the homeless people would be preparing meals and talk to them until they felt comfortable enough to have their picture taken. It was there she took
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (www.masters-of-photography.com/Lange)
. Taken in 1936, it still graces the cover of many a photography book and an edition of
The Grapes of Wrath
. It is the image most people draw on in their memory bank when thinking of the Depression era.
I have used this photograph in my classes because of its power. It shows a woman, 32 years old (who looks much older), staring out from a tent. She is holding a sleeping baby
in her arms, and has two other children, one on each side of her, looking away from the camera. The woman who is seated is looking ahead but off into the distance. Her hand is up to her chin. It is this gesture that moves me. The hand is so gentle, so supportive, yet hardened from her work as a field laborer. Her forehead has worry lines and her eyes are narrowed and staring off into space. They are dressed in rags but retain their dignity. It does not feel like a posed picture thus following Lange's motto, "Hands off! I do not molest what I photograph, I do not meddle, and I do not arrange."
World War II brought an end to the Depression and an end to Lange's work with the Farm Service Administration (FSA). During the war she became deeply upset by the way Japanese Americans were treated after Pearl Harbor. Outraged by our government's decision to force them to relocate to internment camps, once again she used her camera to show the truth. She did a whole series of work on this topic.
One photo that stands out is titled
Japanese boy awaiting evacuation, June 1942 (www.MyHero.com/Dorothea Lange).
It shows a young boy, about fourteen, sitting on his duffel bag and sleeping bag. He is dressed very nicely, in slacks, polished shoes, a suit jacket and a fashionable hat. He is looking away from the camera, not in disrespect or from shyness, but as if there is some information he can glean from far off, like where or when he is going. When I was in high school I did not learn about the Japanese camps. I can only imagine her horror at witnessing this event.
What is most notable and unique about Lange's work is the pride that shines through each person in each portrait, of even the most destitute subjects. Though she was shy, she was known for the personal relationships she developed with her subjects and the respect and care she had for them is evident in her work. Lange's style is also an interesting one for the students to explore. I will use Lange's work to discuss with the students how to document the various social problems that surround them without exploiting the people they document. Some people who suffer turn brittle with anger. Lange, to her credit, used her suffering, and her photography, to reach out to others and to try and changed the unfairness of life and the inequality of social conditions for the rest of her life. By the 1960's she was world famous. A retrospective of her work was held in her honor at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, the same year of her death.