Dorothea Lange: Humanizing The Great Depression

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Dorothea Lange: Humanizing the Depression
“An act of love. That's the deepest thing behind it. The audience, the recipient of it, gives that back” (“THE DUST BOWL”), reflects Dorothea Lange in the years following her photography career. Lange is among the greatest photographers in American history, most well known for her work capturing the Great Depression with her large Graflex camera. The love of her art drove her, but she never realized the extent of her impact on the world. Traveling all over America, Lange captured emotion filled pictures, talking to the people, often times even living in the harsh conditions of the time. Her views of the Depression gave people a look through her lense. Spanning throughout the Great Depression, Dorothea …show more content…
Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn was born of German immigrants on May 26, 1895. Her first bitter encounter was at the young age of seven. Dorothea Nutzhorn was diagnosed with polio, leaving her with a lame right leg. Lange later described her polio, “[It] was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me” (Biography), influencing her to show other’s pain, assisting them through her photography. Lange’s other major conflict broke apart her family in her early teen years, when her parents divorced. The blame of their divorce fell on her father, leading her to drop her middle name and change her surname to her mother’s maiden name, Lange. Dorothea Lange was educated in public schools for four years prior to enrolling in the New York Training School for Teachers. She soon decided to go into professional photography, learning in many well known photography studios. Lange then moved to San Francisco, establishing her own portrait business in 1919. With a husband, muralist Maynard Dixon, and her two sons she familiarized in the middle class life she’d lived since a young …show more content…
Many of her documentary photos used dramatic angles to provide truthful, jarring subjects. Lange also used emotion to her advantage in really bring the audience into the moment of the photo. Dorothea Lange once said, “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still,” (“Dorothea Lange Biography…”). Every photograph Lange took showed the world what their lives looked like in a standstill using her eye for truth. She soon developed her signature style of photojournalism. In taking the famous “Migrant Mother” photographs, Lange said, “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions,” as her photos typically came to her. “I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed.” This story would be similar to many others during the Great Depression. “There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it,” (“Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”). Altogether, the photographs truly
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Photojournalist: Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She is best known for her work in the Depression era documenting rural poverty, exploitation of sharecroppers, migrant laborers, and the internment of Japanese Americans humanizing the consequences of the Great Depression and other social injustices. She contracted polio at age seven and her father left the family when she was twelve years old. These tragic incidents from her past shaped and defined her. Art and literature…

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