Lange, Dorothea

(1895-1965)

   Born Dorothea Margarette Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, the photographer and photojournalist dropped her middle name and adopted her mother’s maiden name after her father abandoned the family. A victim of polio at the age of seven, she was left with a permanently weakened leg. She studied photography in New York City and in 1918 moved to San Francisco, California, where she opened a portrait studio. In 1936, she joined the team of photographers in the federal Resettlement Administration, later called the Farm Security Administration, and began capturing the impact of the Great Depression. Many of her photographs of unemployed men and women became nationally and internationally known, but her best-known photo was of a migrant woman in Nipoma, California, that became known as Migrant Madonna (1936). In 1941, Lange gave up a Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph the relocation of Japanese Americans. Her photographs were consequently impounded by the army. She also photographed war workers and other individuals of the period, documenting the social impact of World War II for the Office of War Information, and the writing of the United Nations Charter for the State Department. In 1952, Lange was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, but her declining health limited her work.