A New Look at Dorothea Lange’s Life and Work

A new documentary about photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) recounts how one woman navigated work, love, and family in the first half of the twentieth century. It also captures an artist/documentarian who was on the cutting edge of United States history, bearing witness to events from the Great Depression to the shameful legacy of World War II internment camps to the destruction of the environment.

Lange was determined to present the truth, at whatever cost. She said, “The camera is a powerful instrument for saying to the world, ‘This is the way it is. Look at it.’”

The film, Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning, is an honest portrait of a complex individual. It was written and directed by Dyanna Taylor—whose father was Lange’s stepson. Taylor’s close relationship to her grandmother gave her access to diaries and personal journals. Taylor told me that one of her goals was to reframe Lange’s “place in history” and to demonstrate the breadth of her oeuvre beyond the iconic Migrant Mother (1936).

Lange’s story is related chronologically, while intercut with home footage scenes of her preparation for a 1966 one-woman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. She oversaw the curation of her complete body of work, embodying her oft-quoted statement “Your file of negatives is your biography.”

Challenged early in life, Lange contracted polio at the age of seven. The result was a “withered foot” and a limp. Five years later, her father deserted the family.

Lange determined that she would be a photographer even before she possessed a camera. She learned to make herself “unseen,” a coping strategy from her illness that she described as wearing “an invisible cloak.” By high school, she was skipping classes to observe life on the streets of Manhattan and to visit the Stieglitz Gallery, where she saw the work of Paul Strand. This led to an apprenticeship with photographer Arnold Genthe, known for both his portraits of Greta Garbo and his scenes of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Lange left home with a friend at 21 to discover the world—but was robbed in San Francisco. Undeterred, she landed a job processing film, learning the basics of her trade.

At 24, Lange secured financial backing to open her own portrait studio. She was resilient and tough, working 18 to 20 hours a day. She became part of a “bohemian circle” of artists and intellectuals, where she was introduced to painter Maynard Dixon—20 years her senior. Lange and Dixon were married in 1920 (through 1935). Lange tartly noted, “My marriage with Mr. Dixon will not interfere with my work, as I will continue in my profession.”

It didn’t exactly transpire that way. Lange struggled to support herself, and sometimes Dixon, so that he could pursue painting. He left the household frequently—sometimes for months at a time. Lange, in turn, was conflicted about her responsibilities for their two children together—and Dixon’s daughter. She experienced the caretaking tasks as an intrusion upon her photography.

Lange is often characterized in interviews as not being “terribly nurturing” to her children or stepchildren. In the documentary, Jan Goggans (author of California on the Breadlines) pointedly counters: “She really was driven in a way we give tremendous permission to men for, but absolutely no permission to women.”

Lange believed that art was “an act of total attention.” 1933 was a pivotal year, as she confronted the dichotomy between the portrait work she was doing and the growing desperation among those affected by the Depression. It crystallized in a view from her window: hungry men in breadlines. She ran down to seize the moment, an act she called “grabbing a hunk of lighting.” The result was the powerful composition White Angel Breadline. Social mores determined that women in need should be hidden from the public, seeking assistance only in private spaces such as churches. Yet Lange captured a visceral metaphor of survival in the image of a woman’s legs wearing a pair of repeatedly Mended Stockings (1934).

Lange covered the speeches and protests of the dangerous San Francisco longshoremen strike of 1934, determined to record what she believed were working conditions akin to slavery. Asked why she had risked her personal safety in an explosive citywide situation where 2,500 armed guardsmen had attacked citizens, Lange stated, “It needed to be done.”

Her photographs of the event were displayed at a gallery in Oakland, where they were seen by Paul Schuster Taylor, a progressive labor economist. He contacted Lange to inquire about using a photograph for one of his articles. That connection led to a 30-year marriage based on deep love and shared activist values.

Taylor hired Lange to shoot photographs to augment his government reports. Together, they recorded a new type of migration brought on by drought and the mechanization of farming, represented in Tractored Out (1938). She also documented the on-the-ground realities of New Deal policies with images including a man driving a jalopy in Ditched, Stalled and Stranded (1935) and a depiction of anti-migrant sentiment in Georgia Road Sign (1938).

In February 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, placing Japanese Americans in internment camps. The War Relocation Authority hired Lange to document Manzanar Camp in California. Her images were not what the agency expected. The story her photos told was clear and disconcerting: portraits of families wearing identification tags; barracks framed by mountains, the American flag, and barbed wire; images that clearly showed the reality of the actions of the American government. Lange was fired and her photos impounded. Emotionally affected by this horrific chapter in American history. Lange asked, “This is what we did. How did it happen? How could we?”

Lange died three months before her exhibit opened. Her ability to distill from a specific moment the essence of “seeing” beyond the surface remains the hallmark of her personal vision. She was both singular and determined.

Author and MIT professor Anne Whiston Spirn expressed in the film: “Lange’s photographs speak to us today not just because they are about our past, but also because they speak to our present.”

Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning premieres nationally Friday, August 29, on PBS.