Comic Life

Photographer : Dorothea Lange

Name : Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn (Lange)

Birth : May 26, 1895    Death : October 11, 1965 (Age 70)
Location Born : Hoboken, New Jersey
Known For : Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA)
Occupation : Photographer & Photojournalist
Equipment Used : Fixed-tripod camera, Graflex 4x5 single lens reflex camera
Schooling : Photography at Columbia University in New York City

Dorothea was born in Hoboken, on May 26th, 1895 and is a well-known photographer specifically for her famous piece of a desperate and hungry mother, Florence Thompson, with her two children linked onto her side.  This photo was called "Migrant Mother".  Growing up loving the city life, she experienced two traumatic incidents. At the age of 12, she dropped her middle name and took her mothers maiden name of Lange after her German father abandoned his family and the other incident was the contraction of Polio, which is a viral disease that can affect nerves, at the age of 7.  Having Polio, weakened her right leg and gave her a permanent limp but that didnt stop her from living her dreams.   Dorothea was educated at the New York Training School for teachers but later changed her mind to get involved in photography.  She started to work in a Arnold Genthe`s studio and later went to study at Columbia University with Clarence White, an American Photographer. 

In 1918, Lange moved to San Francisco and after the following year, she opened up a portrait studio that was very successful.  In 1920, Dorothea married Maynard Dixon, a western painter and later had two sons, Daniel Rhoades Dixon and John Eaglesfeather Dixon.  Her focus for her photography was unemployed, homeless people which led her to an employment opportunity with Farm Security Administration. 

December of 1935, Dorothea divorced Maynard, and later married a Professor of Economics at University of California, Paul Schuster Taylor.  Paul then taught Dorothea the importance of social, political matters and they together recorded on rural poverty and exploitation of migrant laborers. 

`"From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea Lange's work for the RA and FSA brought the plight of the poor and forgotten — particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers — to public attention. Distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era"

In 1941, Dorothea was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography. A couple years later, in 1945, she was invited by Ansel Adams, another famous photographer, to a position as faculty at a fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts.   Later, in 1952 she co-founded the photographic magazine called "Aperture" which later herself and Pirkle Jones were commissioned to shoot a photo documentary for Life Magazine for the passing of Monticello, California and displacement of the residents by damming of Putah Creek to create Kale Berryessa in the mid 1950s.

Dorothea's health became very poor not to long after.  She begun to suffer from gastric problms, which had bleeding ulcers as well as post-polio syndrome.  She later died on October 11th 1965 from Esophageal Cancer.  In todays society, we still remember having her photographs of the internment at the National Archives website and also at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. 

Florence Thompson, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936
1960 : "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. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. 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."

Three Churches of the High Plains, Near Winner, South Dakota , 1938

Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California, 1935



Dust Storm near Mills, New Mexico, 1935

Migratory cotton picker, Near Coolidge, Arizona, 1940

Dust Storm, Manzanar,1942

Crossroads Store, Person Country, North Carolina, 1939

Why did I chose Dorothea Lange?  Well, I love her work especially because it is back when the Depression was happening and for myself, I love the older look, and that they are in black in white. I would just love to go back in time to take photos just like this.  Today's life style just isn't the same as it used to be.