“You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” - Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was born in 1895 and died in 1965. She is known for her photographs of street life in depression-era San Francisco. Lange spent her first years as a photographer doing portraits in the 20’s. Her early documentary work includes images of Native Americans and by the 1930’s, Lange found studio work monotonous and unimaginative. Lange took her camera from the studio to the streets and began capturing riots, strikes, tenant farmers, and the Great Plains. Lange began to focus on the daily life of down-and-out people in search of brighter futures.
Dorothea Lange played a large part in documenting the social and economic changes in the back streets of America. When poverty struck the already economically unstable population in the 1930’s, Lange was able to capture the new ‘cash crop’ farmers and the growing number of homeless people that surfaced. Her photographs illustrated the movement of Americans “from a small rural community to an urban mass culture”, as the depression passed and a new wave of industrialism swept the country.
World War II opened up a new chapter in Lange’s career as a photographer. During this period, Lange took influential photographs of the forced relocation of Japanese Americans, women and minority workers in wartime industries, and the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco.
During the final years of her life, Dorothea Lange photographed Ireland, Asia, Egypt, midwestern utopian communities, and the post-war scenes of the Bay Area. Much of Lange’s work was focused on the changes and developments of society. Dorothea Lange’s photographs are more than simple works of art; they depict scenes in American (and other countries’) history and illustrate many social changes that are still current themes.

Above: "The Migrant Mother" (left), and "Salute of Innocence" (right).