Dorothea Lange
American photojournalist (1895-1965)
Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.
Lange expressed her photographic image interest as the "last ditch:" documenting the poor and dispossessed. Her Migrant Mother image taken in 1936 has become the defining image of the Dust Bowl and is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. Lange taught fine art photography in her later years at California School of Fine Arts.
Early life
Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to second-generation German immigrants Johanna Lange and Heinrich Nutzhorn. She had a younger brother named Martin. Two early events shaped Lange's path as a photographer.
First, at age seven she contracted polio, which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp. "It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me," Lange once said of her altered gait.
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