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Dorothea Lange atop an automobile in California. Photographer unknown. 1930’s.

By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor at Blogfinger.net

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was a famous American documentary photographer who was born in Hoboken, but whose career took her to San Francisco.  She studied photography at Columbia University under a master: Clarence White.

She had a gallery and photofinishing studio, but she became renowned when she joined the Farm Security Administration team that documented the dust bowl and the depression.

Dorothea Lange. “Migrant Mother.” California, 1936.

Her most famous photograph was of a destitute migrant mother with children in 1936.  Here is a quote from Dorothea about that image:

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

The Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco is having a show about Dorothea Lange and her “Bay Area Contemporaries.”  If you are going to be there, the Nichols Gallery is at 49 Geary Street.

Dorothea Lange. “Mended Stockings.. Stenographer” San Francisco, 1934. A print sold recently for $24,000 in New York. This print is in the Nichols show.

COUNT BASIE  AND HIS ORCHESTRA  “Shiny Stockings” from his album the Count’s Finest Hours—–perfection!

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