Dorothea Lange was born Dorothea Nutzhorn on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey. dorothea Lang art

During the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets. Her photographs of migrant workers were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves. Lange’s first exhibition, held in 1934, established her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer. In 1940, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Dorothea Lang photos

When Dorothea was 7 she contracted polio, which left her right leg and foot noticeably weakened. Later, however, she’d feel almost appreciative of the effects the illness had on her life. “[It] was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” she said.Just before Dorothea reached her teen years, her parents divorced. Dorothea grew to blame the separation on her father and eventually dropped his surname and took her mother’s maiden name, Lange, as her own.

Art and literature were big parts of Lange’s upbringing. Her parents were both strong advocates for her education, and exposure to creative works filled her childhood.Lang Art work

Following high school, Lange, who’d never shown much interest in academics, decided to pursue photography as a profession. She studied the art form at Columbia University, and then, over the next several years, cut her teeth as an apprentice, working for several different photographers, including Arnold Genthe, a leading portrait photographer.

artIn the late 1920s she became dissatisfied with studio work and experimented with landscape and plant photography, although she found the results unsatisfactory.

With the Stock Market crash of 1929 Lange decided to look for subjects outside her studio. Turning to the effects of the economic decline she took photographs such as General Strike, San Francisco (1934; Oakland, CA, Mus.).

She had her first one-woman 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,

Migrant Mother set up to deal with the problem of the migration of agricultural workers.

One of her most famous photographs from this project is Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936; Washington, DC, Lib. Congr.), which depicts an anxious, distracted mother and three children.