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Biography of Photographer Dorothea Lange Essay

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Through out the Great Depression there were many photographers, but one of the best was Dorothea Lange. Lange was born on the 25th of May in 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey as the first child of Joan and Henry Nutzhorn. She decided to become a photographer at the age of 18. She studied photography at Columbia University in New York. At the age of 20 she began to travel the world. Later in life she settled down in San Francisco, California, where she met her first husband, artist Maynard Dixon. She had had to children Daniel (1925) and John (1928). She died on the 11th of October in 1916. Even Though some people believe Dorothea Lange was not a great photographer, Dorothea was because she caused great inspiration of those going through the hard…show more content…
Her most well know piece Migrant Mother which was of Florence Owens Thompson. The photograph shows a worn out mother with her two children's heads in her shoulders, and a baby in her lap.

Dorothea Lange’s pictures of the homeless during the Great Depression got the attention of the Federal Resettlement Administration. She began to work for them taking pictures and capturing the publics attention of the poor. She also worked for the US Farm Security Administration before World War Two. She investigated the conditions of farm workers in many Western states. Many of the people she photographed during this time had came to escape the “Dust Bowl” (a drought which devastated millions of acres of farm land in midwestern states).

When the United States joined WWII in 1941 here was a relocation of the Japanese- Americans. Dorothea Lange was hired shortly after this took place by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). She was hired to show there new living styles in there new there new living quarters. The photographs she took showed there new neighborhoods, processing centers, and there whole camp facilities. So Lange could capture the spirit of the camps, she made it so her images showed courage and dignity. Most of the photos she took here were censored by the federal government.

Dorothea Lange put some the photographs she took in to her books. Her book Dorothea Lange’s Ireland, published in 1996,explores the world of the rural Irish families. It shows there
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