
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea
Lange
was
an
American
photographer
most
famous
for
her
photography
of
agricultural
workers
and
their
migration
during
the
Great
Depression. Her
most
famous
photograph
is
the
iconic, Migrant
Mother,
Nipomo,
California
(1936),
which
endures
as
the
defining
image
of
the
era. In
1941
she
was
awarded
a
prestigious
Guggenheim
Fellowship,
and
this
allowed
her
to
take
a
series
of
photographs
of
religious
groups
in
the
USA,
such
as
those
of
the
Amish
people.
From
1914
to
1917
she
attended
the
New
York
Training
School
for
Teachers
and
there
decided
to
become
a
photographer,
partly
influenced
by
visits
to
the
photographer
Arnold
Genthe.... Read More
From
1917
to
1918
she
attended
a
photography
course
run
by
Clarence
H.
White
at
Columbia
University,
NY.
Lange
moved
to
San
Francisco
in
1918,
and
in
1919
she
set
up
a
successful
portrait
studio
where
she
took
works
such
as
Clayburgh
Children,
San
Francisco.
In
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
like
General
Strike,
San
Francisco.
She
had
her
first
one-woman
show
at
the
Brockhurst
Studio
of
Willard
Van
Dyke
in
Oakland,
CA
in
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
in
1935
she
transferred
to
the
Resettlement
Administration,
set
up
to
deal
with
the
problem
of
the
migration
of
agricultural
workers.
She
continued
to
work
for
this
body,
through
its
various
transformations
(including
its
time
as
the
Farm
Security
Administration),
until
1942.
In
1939,
in
collaboration
with
Taylor,
who
provided
the
text,
she
published
An
American
Exodus,
of
her
portraits
of
migrant
workers.
In
1942
she
worked
for
the
War
Relocation
Authority
and
from
1943
to
1945
for
the
Office
of
War
Information
in
San
Francisco.
Illness
prevented
her
working
from
1945
to
1951,
after
which
she
produced
photographs
of
the
Mormons
and
of
rural
life
in
Ireland
for
articles
in
Life
in
1954
and
1955.
In
the
late
1950's
and
early
1960s
she
worked
with
Taylor
in
East
Asia,
South
America,
Egypt,
and
the
Middle
East.
-Oxford
University
Press
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