Research ~ Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Nutzhorn (Lange) born 26 May 1895, in New Jersey, the family was deserted by her father early on and from that time she used her mother's maiden name of Lange. She began training as a teacher, however, after deciding this would not suit, moved into photography, working in a studio before studying under Clarence White at Colombia University, setting up her own studio in San Francisco in 1918 and joining the California Camera Club, where she was influenced by the work of other photogaphers including Consuelo Kanaga a radical photojournalist with the San Francisco Cronicle.


Images from Consuelo Kanaga

The business was a success, until the great depression which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929.  At this time she turned to social realism and her work was featured in Camera Craft magazine.

She was invited to join the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration  in 1935 which was a group of photographers employed to publicize the condition of the rural poor of America.  During this period some of her more notable pictures were published including the famous Migrant Mother.

Later she documented the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war.  She also worked for Time Magazine and with Ansel Adams.

A major retrospective of her work was planned in the mid 1960's at the Museum of Modern Art in New York but unfortunately she died of cancer 11 October 1965 just before this was staged.

Her work has a gritty realism with no frills or fancy lighting, she worked with what was available and made many memorable images.

I would ideally like to get this realism in my work, showing the character behind the outer surface of my sitters, rather than a plastic type of surface realism which is generic to every portrait I produce.