Dorothea Lange: The Consequences Of The Great Depression
There were very many influential people in the 1930s. One that stuck out the most was Dorothea Lange. She was a professional photographer, a very known professional photographer, during the Great Depression and even after that. She documented the struggle of migrant farm families. Lange photographed the pain and despair of women, men, and children living in dirty, miserable camps. She also photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets of San Francisco (Migrants). Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the FSA or the Farm Security Administration. Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development
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of documentary photography (My Favorite Arts).
When Dorothea’s grandparents immigrated from Germany in the mid-1800s, they found their new home in Hoboken New Jersey (International). Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn, also known as Dorothea Lange, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 26, 1895. She was the oldest child in her family. She only had one sibling, a brother actually, his name was Martin. Lange was a happy child for about the first seven years of her life, then her life took a turn for the worst. At the age of seven, she was diagnosed with polio and was stuck with a limp in her right leg even after she recovered. Her father was a lawyer. That wouldn’t matter for long because when she was twelve years old, her father left her and her family. He was never seen again. Dorothea’s family was forced to go live with her grandmother in Manhattan and become extremely sparing (“Her Journey”). She attended public school, but wasn't a very big fan of it and she did not do very well. She often skipped school and her mother never made sure she was attending (International). Later in high school, Lange was rejected by all of the social groups in the fashionable all-girl school she attended (“Her Journey”). Sadly, Dorothea died of esophageal cancer on October 11, 1965 (A&E Networks).
The sociable isolation she faced did have some positive results, though. Instead of hanging out with friends, she saw everything around her as an image. By the age of eighteen, she had decided what she wanted to do with her life. “I want to be a photographer,” she declared. With that in mind, she became not only a photographer, but a famous one (“Her Journey”).
In 1918, at the age of twenty-three, she decided to move to San Francisco with one of her female friends she called Fronsie. Two years after moving to California, she marries a man name Maynard Dixon. He was a well-known muralist. With him, they had 2 sons. She gave birth to Daniel in 1925, and John in 1927. In 1935, she divorces Maynard and marries a man named Paul Schuster Taylor (Migrants). Paul was an economics professor at the University of California and was an agricultural economist and progressive thinker (The Great Depression). In that same year, Dorothea got recruited by the Farm Security Administration by Taylor. The Farm Security Administration is a division of the U. S. government that represented the interests of American farm workers, including tenant farmers and people of color. During this time, Lange recorded the conditions of workers living in poverty-stricken areas of the West coast, the South and the Midwest, including the camps that resulted from the Dust Bowl migration. The photographs from her tenure with the FSA have become iconic within American history and photography (The Art Story).
One of her most famous pictures is called “Migrant Mother.” Lange took the photo Migrant Mother in California in 1936. Lange captured the mother and her children's feeling of lost hope for the future. When this photo published, it made the public realize unemployment had great impact on family. This photo was published on a media in Los Angeles. Because of this photo, Lange was the first woman in history to be awarded with the Guggenheim fellowship prize in 1941 (A&E Networks). The Guggenheim prize is a grant that is awarded annually to those" who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts". This picture being taken made many wonderful things happen. One of those wonderful things was, after this picture went viral and people saw how miserable the people in the picture were, 22,000 pounds of food was shipped to the farm where this famous picture was taken. That piece of work is now hanging in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (“Dorothea Lange”).
While sitting in her studio in the early thirties, Dorothea began examining the streets.
Fifteen million people were out of work and she began to visualize using her camera as a tool to record the suffering. In 1933, taking her brother Martin along for support, Lange explored the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District, which were lined with the homeless, hungry, and unemployed. She was concerned that she would anger her subjects by invading their privacy. She was worried that her large camera would frighten them away, that her process would be too slow, and that she would be accused of violating their dignity. But no one seemed aware of her. Not even the man with the tin cup, who faced away from the others on the White Angel Breadline. Hunched over the railing with his hat shielding his haggard face, he seemed lost. Lange was a newcomer to street photography but not to seizing the moment: “… I saw something, and I encompassed it, and I had it.” Whatever Lange “had” was a disturbing but beautiful image that would come to represent the face of the Great Depression: The weariness indicated by the man’s posture, the emptiness of his cup, his individuality obscured by the low brim of his hat, and his isolation from others on the breadline, all adding up to a poignant yet respectful portrait of hopelessness and despair. Jordan’s soup kitchen occupied a junk-filled lot in San Francisco located on the Embarcadero near Filbert Street. This area was known as the White Angel Jungle. The Jungle was not far from Lange’s studio. As she began to change direction from portrait to documentary photography, Lange focused her lens on the poignant scenes just beyond her window. White Angel Breadline is the result of her first day’s work to document Depression-era San Francisco. Decades later, Lange recalled: “[White Angel Breadline] is my most famed photograph. I made that on the first day I ever went out in an area where people said, ‘Oh, don't go there.’ It was
the first day that I ever made a photograph on the street,” (Artsedge).
Lange’s work reflected how the inadequate agricultural economy had negatively affected farmers across the nation, forced to travel the country looking for work, living in tents and shantytowns. These vagabond families were denied access to education, medical care, legal services, the postal system, and even the basic right to vote. After experiencing these conditions Lange and her husband campaigned the FSA to improve the circumstances of these poor farmers. Lange’s goal was to create camps for these migrant farmers that provided clean water, food, substantial shelter, and medical services. Although Lange and her husband were only somewhat successful in this goal, only two camps were eventually created, her work helped to expose the dire conditions in which these workers were living and stood as public testaments to the humanity and struggles of migrant workers. Stryker and the FSA distributed Lange’s work throughout the nation. Her photographs clearly documented the negative effects of the Depression on Americans, particularly the rural poor and migrant farmworkers. Lange’s work was powerful in its effort to portray the personal side of the Depression’s misery, as the individual families she worked with humanized the national crisis. Her work also advocated for new policies: by criticizing the large-scale farming systems that kept thousands out of work, her photographs helped show the necessity of government assistance. Because of Lange’s photographs the nation was able to see the suffering of individual workers and families, and truly see the extent of the problem plaguing the nation (The Great Depression).
Dorothea Lange was influential in the 1930s because all she did was take a picture of a family on a farm, let it going viral, then a company decided to send 22,000 pounds of food to that farm. Not too many people can make something like that happen, or even come close to happening, just by taking a simple photograph. She photographed so many inspiring pictures of the Great Depression. Lange let others know that the Depression was a serious thing, not just something that would last a couple of months and disappear forever. Not only did she take pictures of the Depression, she wrote articles for magazines, too. She wrote articles about how the poor families didn’t have education, healthcare, legal services, postal systems, or even the right to vote. Her pictures and articles together got spread around the world to let people know that these places were in need of help. That is why Dorothea Lange should be chosen as the “Most Influential Figure from the 1930s.”
of documentary photography (My Favorite Arts).
When Dorothea’s grandparents immigrated from Germany in the mid-1800s, they found their new home in Hoboken New Jersey (International). Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn, also known as Dorothea Lange, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 26, 1895. She was the oldest child in her family. She only had one sibling, a brother actually, his name was Martin. Lange was a happy child for about the first seven years of her life, then her life took a turn for the worst. At the age of seven, she was diagnosed with polio and was stuck with a limp in her right leg even after she recovered. Her father was a lawyer. That wouldn’t matter for long because when she was twelve years old, her father left her and her family. He was never seen again. Dorothea’s family was forced to go live with her grandmother in Manhattan and become extremely sparing (“Her Journey”). She attended public school, but wasn't a very big fan of it and she did not do very well. She often skipped school and her mother never made sure she was attending (International). Later in high school, Lange was rejected by all of the social groups in the fashionable all-girl school she attended (“Her Journey”). Sadly, Dorothea died of esophageal cancer on October 11, 1965 (A&E Networks).
The sociable isolation she faced did have some positive results, though. Instead of hanging out with friends, she saw everything around her as an image. By the age of eighteen, she had decided what she wanted to do with her life. “I want to be a photographer,” she declared. With that in mind, she became not only a photographer, but a famous one (“Her Journey”).
In 1918, at the age of twenty-three, she decided to move to San Francisco with one of her female friends she called Fronsie. Two years after moving to California, she marries a man name Maynard Dixon. He was a well-known muralist. With him, they had 2 sons. She gave birth to Daniel in 1925, and John in 1927. In 1935, she divorces Maynard and marries a man named Paul Schuster Taylor (Migrants). Paul was an economics professor at the University of California and was an agricultural economist and progressive thinker (The Great Depression). In that same year, Dorothea got recruited by the Farm Security Administration by Taylor. The Farm Security Administration is a division of the U. S. government that represented the interests of American farm workers, including tenant farmers and people of color. During this time, Lange recorded the conditions of workers living in poverty-stricken areas of the West coast, the South and the Midwest, including the camps that resulted from the Dust Bowl migration. The photographs from her tenure with the FSA have become iconic within American history and photography (The Art Story).
One of her most famous pictures is called “Migrant Mother.” Lange took the photo Migrant Mother in California in 1936. Lange captured the mother and her children's feeling of lost hope for the future. When this photo published, it made the public realize unemployment had great impact on family. This photo was published on a media in Los Angeles. Because of this photo, Lange was the first woman in history to be awarded with the Guggenheim fellowship prize in 1941 (A&E Networks). The Guggenheim prize is a grant that is awarded annually to those" who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts". This picture being taken made many wonderful things happen. One of those wonderful things was, after this picture went viral and people saw how miserable the people in the picture were, 22,000 pounds of food was shipped to the farm where this famous picture was taken. That piece of work is now hanging in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (“Dorothea Lange”).
While sitting in her studio in the early thirties, Dorothea began examining the streets.
Fifteen million people were out of work and she began to visualize using her camera as a tool to record the suffering. In 1933, taking her brother Martin along for support, Lange explored the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District, which were lined with the homeless, hungry, and unemployed. She was concerned that she would anger her subjects by invading their privacy. She was worried that her large camera would frighten them away, that her process would be too slow, and that she would be accused of violating their dignity. But no one seemed aware of her. Not even the man with the tin cup, who faced away from the others on the White Angel Breadline. Hunched over the railing with his hat shielding his haggard face, he seemed lost. Lange was a newcomer to street photography but not to seizing the moment: “… I saw something, and I encompassed it, and I had it.” Whatever Lange “had” was a disturbing but beautiful image that would come to represent the face of the Great Depression: The weariness indicated by the man’s posture, the emptiness of his cup, his individuality obscured by the low brim of his hat, and his isolation from others on the breadline, all adding up to a poignant yet respectful portrait of hopelessness and despair. Jordan’s soup kitchen occupied a junk-filled lot in San Francisco located on the Embarcadero near Filbert Street. This area was known as the White Angel Jungle. The Jungle was not far from Lange’s studio. As she began to change direction from portrait to documentary photography, Lange focused her lens on the poignant scenes just beyond her window. White Angel Breadline is the result of her first day’s work to document Depression-era San Francisco. Decades later, Lange recalled: “[White Angel Breadline] is my most famed photograph. I made that on the first day I ever went out in an area where people said, ‘Oh, don't go there.’ It was
the first day that I ever made a photograph on the street,” (Artsedge).
Lange’s work reflected how the inadequate agricultural economy had negatively affected farmers across the nation, forced to travel the country looking for work, living in tents and shantytowns. These vagabond families were denied access to education, medical care, legal services, the postal system, and even the basic right to vote. After experiencing these conditions Lange and her husband campaigned the FSA to improve the circumstances of these poor farmers. Lange’s goal was to create camps for these migrant farmers that provided clean water, food, substantial shelter, and medical services. Although Lange and her husband were only somewhat successful in this goal, only two camps were eventually created, her work helped to expose the dire conditions in which these workers were living and stood as public testaments to the humanity and struggles of migrant workers. Stryker and the FSA distributed Lange’s work throughout the nation. Her photographs clearly documented the negative effects of the Depression on Americans, particularly the rural poor and migrant farmworkers. Lange’s work was powerful in its effort to portray the personal side of the Depression’s misery, as the individual families she worked with humanized the national crisis. Her work also advocated for new policies: by criticizing the large-scale farming systems that kept thousands out of work, her photographs helped show the necessity of government assistance. Because of Lange’s photographs the nation was able to see the suffering of individual workers and families, and truly see the extent of the problem plaguing the nation (The Great Depression).
Dorothea Lange was influential in the 1930s because all she did was take a picture of a family on a farm, let it going viral, then a company decided to send 22,000 pounds of food to that farm. Not too many people can make something like that happen, or even come close to happening, just by taking a simple photograph. She photographed so many inspiring pictures of the Great Depression. Lange let others know that the Depression was a serious thing, not just something that would last a couple of months and disappear forever. Not only did she take pictures of the Depression, she wrote articles for magazines, too. She wrote articles about how the poor families didn’t have education, healthcare, legal services, postal systems, or even the right to vote. Her pictures and articles together got spread around the world to let people know that these places were in need of help. That is why Dorothea Lange should be chosen as the “Most Influential Figure from the 1930s.”