About
Dorothea Lange, née Nutzhorn, was an American photojournalist known for her documentation of the Great Depression. After studying at Columbia, she opened a studio in San Francisco. Her photo 'White Angel Breadline' (1933) marked her shift to documentary. Hired by the Farm Security Administration, she documented rural poverty and migrants. Her image 'Migrant Mother' (1936) became iconic. She photographed the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 and co-founded Aperture magazine in 1952.
* 1895-05-25 — † 1965-10-11
Major works
- White Angel Breadline (1933)photograph
- Migrant Mother (1936)photograph
- An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (1939)book
Key milestones
- 1935Hired by the Resettlement Administration (later Farm Security Administration).
- 1941First woman awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
- 1966Posthumous retrospective at MoMA, the museum's first one-person photography exhibition devoted to a woman.
Themes
Great DepressionRural povertyMigrantsSocial justiceSocial documentary
Sources: moma.org · loc.gov · britannica.com