Lori Johnson

Thesis Paper

English 11 Honors

US History

January 13, 1998

Lori Johnson

English 11 Honors

Mrs. Hammatt

US History

Mr. Houston

Dorothea Lange: A View of the Depression.

Thesis sentence: within this paper I shall research Dorothea Lange with emphasis on her role as a photographer during the Depression.

I. Introduction

II. Early life

A. Family

1. parents

2. siblings

B. Education

1. Wadleigh High School

2. New York Training School for Teachers

3. Columbia State

III. Early success

A. Arnold Genthe

B. Clarence White

C. Photofinisher

D. Portrait studio

IV. Career

A. Focus of career

1. Depression

a. photos and locations

2. WWII

a. photos and locations

V. Major contributions

A. Political impact

B. Humanitarian impact

VI. Legacy left

A. Long term impact

B. Pathway made for women

VII. Conclusion

Lori Johnson

Thesis Paper

English 11 Honors

Mrs.Hammatt

January 5, 1998

Dorothea Lange was not like most other women of her time. Her dream was not to become a teacher, nurse, librarian, or secretary as women were expected to in that day. Dorothea knew ever since she was a young girl that she wanted to be a photographer. Little did she know that her dream would flourish into a reality and she would become one of the first female documentary photographers whose photographs would later be known throughout the world.

Dorothea Lange was born on May 25, 1895 in Hoboken,New Jersey. Her family consisted of her father, Henry Martin Nutzhorn, her mother, Joan Lange-Nutzhorn, and a single brother. Dorothea suffered during her childhood having been stricken with polio causing her to be left with a life long limp, because one leg was longer than the other. As a result of this physical ailment, she also suffered from her mother's embarrassment and her peers teasing, calling her names such as "limpy". Nevertheless, she did not allow this to bother her later on on her life.

Dorthea loved her father. They would often read Shakespeare together. Then, at the age of twelve, her father abandoned the family never to be seen or heard from again. She eventually changed her name from Nutzhorn to Lange, her mother's maiden name.

In order to compensate for Mr. Nutzhorn leaving, Dorothea's mother had to find a job to support her family. She found work as a librarian in New York City. Dorothea's family had to move to her grandmother's house so that they would be closer to her mother's job. Living with her grandmother, Sophie, was not a good experience for Dorothea, for Sophie was often drunk and would hit her. Her mother worked a lot and she did not like being home because of her grandmother. She spent much of her time, night and day, roaming the streets and going to museums alone or with her friend Fronsie Ahlstrom. Consequently, Dorothea learned to avoid eye contact, to walk over drunks, and to move unnoticed through people; skills that would aid her in her later profession.

At age eighteen Dorothea graduated from Wadleigh High School in 1913. Under the wishes of her mother, she enrolled in the New York Training School for Teachers. She did not wish to become a teacher. She only did this to please her mother. What Dorothea really wanted to do was begin a career in photography, despite the fact that she was a woman, had never owned a camera, nor had she ever taken a photograph in her life. Managing to take a photography course at Columbia State, Dorothea was on her way toward her dream.

Much to Dorothea's favor she happend to pass by the photo shop of Arnold Genthe, a well-known portraitist, who gave her a job as a photofinisher in his studio. She also apprenticed herself with other New York photographers. One of the men under which she studied was Clarence White, whose "soft, lyrical compositions had made him a key member of the Pictorialist School." Dorothea's career was launched.

In January of 1918, Dorothea decided to venture cross country with her friend, Fronsie, intending on an around the world tour. Their journey was quickly ended. On their first day in San Francisco they were robbed, thus forcing Dorothea and Fronsie to reside in their present location. Here Dorothea opened her own portrait studio, which grew into a successful business resulting in elite friends and clientele.

Dorothea joined a camera club where she met her first husband, Maynard Dixon, a western wilderness painter. They often traveled together. She took photographs while he painted. Eventually, they had two sons, Daniel Rhoades, born in 1925, and John Eaglefeather, born in 1929.

In the summer of 1929 Dorothea had a sort of spiritual awakening.

Looking out the window of her studio and seeing the effect of the depression around her helped her realize what she had to do. "The discrepancy," Lange said,"between what I was working on in the printing frames and what was going on in the streets was more that I could assimilate." "Discrepancy" was what led Lange to begin taking pictures of real people and their hardships during the Depression.

The stock market crash, which was part of the cause for the Depression, affected Dorothea's work. No one could afford photographs anymore. Dorothea and Maynard were forced to close their studios. She found herself working with her camera more and more in the streets. Her work was a direct, heartfelt response to the surrounding happenings on street corners, in vacant lots, and in breadlines. Lange tried to capture the impact of the Depression on individual lives. She got close to her subjects without threatening or interrupting them. To do this, she began recording life in the streets, concentrating on the blunt realities of the poor and unemployed. Her major concern was to capture her subjects on film exactly as she saw them, "Colored with a sense of the time and place in which they lived." She photographed the "White Angel Breadline", a soup kitchen set up by a working-class widow. This photograph was of a downcast man holding a dented tin cup. This was the beginning of a new career and a great new reputation.

Dorothea and Maynard had moved to Taos,New Mexico to live with a group of artists at the beginning of the Depression. Their sons were sent away to boarding school so that Dorothea and Maynard could focus on their careers. At first, Dorothea was sure what purpose her photographs would serve, nevertheless she displayed a collection of her work in 1933 at Willard Van Dyke's studio in Oakland, California to see what might result from it. This exhibit caught the interest of Paul Taylor, an agricultural economics professor at the University of California at Berkley, who was greatly impressed by her work. Dorothea and Paul began working together. She would take photographs while he would write articles. Together their reports helped to start the FSA, Farm Security Administration. Paul Invited Dorothea to join his government commissioned group to do a study of indigent farm workers at the pea fields of Nipomo, California. The reports made from this study, that were submitted by Lange and Taylor, were an important factor in securing money for the first government funded migrant camps. This was the beginning of a professional and personal partnership between the two.Dorothea and Maynard divorced and just a few months later she was remarried to Paul Taylor in 1935.

Dorothea returned to Nipomo to do more work for the FSA. Here she met Florence Thompson, the "Migrant Mother". This photograph was taken in a Pea Picker Farm where men, women, and children were starving to death. In the midst of the shanties set up around the fields, sat a laboress with no way to make a day's wages. Florence Thompson was a widowed mother of seven children. One of Lange's field notes stated,

" 'Migrant Mother' Symbolizes the Depression in America. It is an image that quietly defines an era. It typifies Lange's powerful style of documentary photography: unflinching, but not intrusive, compassionate, yet never sentimental." The appearance of "Migrant Mother" in one newspaper produced $200,000 toward building state-run model camps. It was Published in the San Francisco news and spread throughout the country. This photograph and Paul's writings caught the attention of Washington, D.C. and as a result, twenty thousand pounds of food were sent to the starving people of the Pea Picker Farms. The work that Dorothea and Paul did for the FSA also inspired John Steinbeck to write the book The Grapes of Wrath.

Despite all of the work that she did,Dorothea's relationship with the FSA did not last, because her working methods clashed with those of the FSA. Dorothea was cut from the group in 1939. Using many of the photographs from the FSA years, Dorothea and Paul published a book in 1939 titled An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, without much success. The content of this book matched photographs with quotes, statistics, and Dorothea and Paul's own words. They published this book in order to "mourn the death of the small farm and decry the arrival of mechanized farm equipment, which made large scale farming possible and displaced common farm hands." One of the photographs that was used was "Plantation Overseer and His Field Hands." This is a photograph of a large white man in the foreground standing with his foot on his automobile, while five African-American men sulk under a Coca-Cola ad on the porch behind him." Writer and essayist, George P. Elliott once wrote about this photograph,

There were many other photographs taken during Dorothea's work with Paul. One of these photographs was titled "Toward Los Angeles." This portrayed two men walking west with the entirety of their possessions on their back. On the side of the road there is a billboard that says tauntingly,"Next time try the train. Relax." Also taken at the time she worked with Paul Taylor during the Depression were the photographs, "Hoe Culture", "Ex-slave With Long Memory", "Six Tenant Farmers Without Farms", "Family on the Road", "Woman of the High Plains", and many others.

In 1940 the attention was shifted from the Depression to the preparation for World War II. After Dorothea and Paul had stopped working for the FSA, they moved to Berkley, California from San Francisco. Dorothea had planned to photograph rich community life of the disappearing small-farm heartland. Contrastingly, she was hired by the War Relocation Authority. Three months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered the relocation the Japanese-Americans into armed camps in the West. The WRA hired Dorothea to photograph the Japanese-American neighborhoods, processing centers, and camp facilities. Her earlier work during the Depression did not prepare her for the disturbing racial and civil rights issues caused by the Japanese internment. Dorothea captured the forced evacuation of entire families, the patient yet sadly smiling faces of evacuees and, in one picture, a bold lettered sign on a Japanese storefront: "I AM AN AMERICAN!" She also captured on film the spirit of the camps. Dorothea created images "frequently juxtapose signs of human courage and dignity with physical evidence of the indignities of incarceration." Quickly, Dorothea found herself at odds with her employer and the United States government. Many of her photographs were censored by the federal government. The true impact of her work was not felt until 1972, after her death and Many of the negatives were lost. The Whitney Museum incorporated twenty-seven of Dorothea's photographs into the "Executive Order 9066", an exhibit about the Japanese-American internment. A New York Times critic at the time, A.D. Coleman, called Dorothea's photographs "documents of such high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime."

In 1941, a great honor, Dorothea received one of the first Guggenheim fellowships awarded to a photographer to photograph "the American social scene". Consequently, Dorothea became ill during the beginning of the project and she decided that it would be best for her if she did not continue. Instead, from 1942 through 1957, Dorothea began to travel with her son Daniel, who had become a writer. They worked together on projects similar to what she and Paul had done. Some of the photographs that were taken during this time were "Gunlock", and "Leslie Dixon Reading at Steep Ravine". Dorothea then traveled again with her husband, Paul Taylor in 1958 until 1962. They traveled to places such as Asia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Egypt. Some of the photographs taken at this time were entitled "Children", "Two Women", and "Andrew". In Dorothea's last years, her work was exhibitioned in Boston and Europe. She completed the pictures for a book titled The American Woman and had also worked on two films for the National Educational Television and Radio Center. Then, having been diagnosed with cancer, Dorothea Lange passed away on October 11, 1965 at the age of seventy. In January of the following year, her photographs were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The work of Dorothea Lange had a profound impact on society. She was one of the earliest and best documentary photographers who paved a new avenue for women photo-journalists. She achieved impact with the depth of her compassion that guided her camera rather than using trickery or unusual techniques. Moments were captured that showed peoples lives and true feelings. Dorothea brought a "skillful eye for subtlety and depth to her photographs of the Depression of the 1930's, the 1940's Japanese-American internment camps, and the Mormon towns of the 1950's." Her founding ideas of American documentary photography reveal the impact of social and economic changes. She opened the eyes of people everywhere to the individual hardships suffered during the Depression, through World War II, and on. Dorothea was involved in many projects revealing human condition culminating in long lists of works including works with Ansel Adams for Life Magazine (1954-55) and work for the State Department surrounding the United Nations Conference (1945), though she is best noted for her work with the FSA during the 1930's. Changing lives for the better was a way of living for Dorothea. "With a humanist's eye she captured the dehumanizing effects of depression and war." Dorothea's subjects changed as times changed, but "In all of her work she lived up to the ideal articulated three centuries ago by Francis Bacon." This quote of his which gave her inspiration, hung on the door of her darkroom until her death from cancer in 1965:

"The contemplation of things

as they are

without substitution or

imposture

is in itself a nobler thing

than a whole harvest of

invention."

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