Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange – A loner studies society

Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on 26 May 1895. When her father left the family, her mother moved with Dorothea and her brother to New York to work as a librarian. Dorothea cast her father from her consciousness completely and later took her mother’s maiden name. She made few connections as a non-Jewish girl in a predominantly Jewish district of New York, suffered a walking impediment as a result of polio when she was young, and was subjected to a great deal of ridicule from the other children. She preferred therefore to roam the city streets by herself and to observe people and it was during this time that she developed and sharpened her sense of societal relations and the particulars of daily life. She struggled in school, however, had no social contacts and in retrospect recognised her youth as a deeply unhappy phase in which she nevertheless developed a great inner strength that enabled her to pursue her later career.

Teacher training, voluntary apprenticeship as a photographer

At the age of 18, Dorothea Lange already knew that her vocation lay in photography. Only on the insistence of her mother did she reluctantly attend a teaching seminar but simultaneously trained as a photographer for two years, worked for photographer friends and studied under masters such as Arnold Genthe and Charles H. Davis, among others. Until 1917 she also took photography courses under Clarence H. White at the Columbia University. After her successful graduation, she embarked on a world tour with her only friend Florence Bates which however came to an end in San Francisco following a robbery and the loss of her funds. She opened her own portrait studio in 1919 with the help of a loan where she welcomed many affluent customers and so quickly became financially independent. Through a befriended couple, she met the painter Maynard Dixon who she went on to marry. Dixon was 20 years older, had little understanding for his wife’s work and had many affairs –despite two sons the marriage was unhappy, and they separated in 1935.

Dorothea Lange and the documentation of suffering

With the outbreak of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Dorothea Lange was already established as a popular portraitist of the upper classes. It wasn’t, however, the palaces of San Francisco’s high society that were to make her famous, but the streets. Dorothea Lange captured the suffering around her with her camera, photographing soup kitchens, demonstrations, queues for welfare and employment offices. Lange wished to show things as they really were – merciless, without embellishment, without artistic accent. The economist Paul Schuster Taylor became aware of her work and courted her – first as an employee at his institute documenting poverty in rural areas of the USA, then as a wife. Her most famous picture “Migrant Mother”, showing a homeless migrant woman with her hungry child, was taken in 1936. The picture had a tremendous impact and the American government allocated 20 million dollars to the fight against famine. Dorothea Lange died in her hometown of San Francisco on 11 October 1965 from cancer. Her photographic documentation of suffering has become deeply embedded in the collective memory of American society and is still present today.