Dorothea Lange (1895–1965)
Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer whose work helped define how the United States remembers the Great Depression and the social upheavals of the mid-20th century. With a direct, human-centered approach, she made photographs that connected large public events to individual lives—often focusing on workers, families, and communities navigating displacement, poverty, and state power.
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Lange trained in photography in New York before relocating to San Francisco in 1919, where she ran a successful portrait studio. As the Depression reshaped public life, her attention shifted away from studio commissions and toward the streets—photographing unemployment, breadlines, and the city’s most vulnerable residents with an unvarnished clarity.
In the mid-1930s, Lange began working for federal agencies documenting economic hardship and migration in the American West and beyond, including assignments for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). From this period came some of the most widely recognized photographs in American history, including Migrant Mother (1936), made in Nipomo, California. Her images were not simply records; they were arguments for public attention and reform—visual evidence intended to be seen.
Lange’s career also encompassed wartime work. In 1942, she was hired to photograph the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans under the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Many of these images were restricted from broad circulation at the time, but they remain essential to the visual history of civil liberties in the United States.
Across decades of practice, Lange returned to recurring themes: the dignity of everyday people, the structures that shape opportunity, and the emotional weight carried in gestures, posture, and expression. Today, her photographs are held by major museums and archives, and her influence is felt across documentary photography, photojournalism, and visual storytelling.
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Known for: Great Depression and migration-era documentary photographs; social and political reportage
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Notable federal work: Farm Security Administration (FSA); War Relocation Authority (WRA)
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Primary geographies: San Francisco and the American West, with broader U.S. assignments
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Legacy: A defining voice in socially engaged documentary photography
