Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was born of second generation German immigrants on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Lange took photography classes in New York City and was informally apprenticed to several New York photography studios. In 1918, Dorothea moved to San Francisco, and by the next year, she had opened up her own successful photography studio. When the Great Depression hit, Lange turned her camera lens away from the studio and toward the street. She began photographing unemployed and homeless people. Eventually, Dorothea teamed up with her new husband and together they documented rural poverty, and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers for the next five years. From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea’s work brought the poor and the forgotten to public attention, making her images icons of the era. Dorothea Lange’s ‘aesthetic’ was to expose the reality of life during the world’s most difficult times.

(Homeless migrant mother and her sons, Japanese children pledging allegiance the day before Japanese internment, Japanese man put up an 'I Am An American' banner outside of his market before the Japanese Interment).