Dorothea Lange
...trying times. She was partly responsible for the creation of the photographic unit of the Federal Resettlement Administration who she photographed from 1935 to 1942. Then in 1952 she was one of the founders of Aperture. . In 1954-1955 she was a staff photographer with Life magazine Lange used her critical eye to record the “human dignity and pride of Japanese Americans” forced to leave their homes and into the internment camps. Prior to WWII, her best known work focused mainly on migrant farm workers during the Great Depression also known as the “poor and forgotten” for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). In 1941 she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography for her "photographic study of the American social scene," a project she was prevented from completing by the United States' entry into World War II. Even today, those whose lives are surrounded by realistic photographs of people engaged in major changes and events are experiencing the impact of Dorothea Lange’s contributions. “Edward Steichen called her “the greatest photo journalist to live”.” “Whether viewing a single image or the thousands that comprise a lifetime’s work Lange called upon the sheer power of her considerable will to force the medium of photography to obey and respond to the world that surrounded her.”] Two of her photographs were highly talked about; one was the famous, Migrant Mother, considered a photographic icon of the Great Depression in America. The photo was taken in March 1936 at a camp for seasonal agricultural workers where it is said that she actually walked back to take the picture of the mother and her two children. . As a result of Lange taking her picture to a newspaper editor, who notified the government, the government acted by rushing a shipment of 20,000 lbs. of food to the camp. The other was considered one of the most telling of the time, “White Angel Bread Line” which was described as, an "unshaven, hunched-up little man, leaning on a railing with a tin can between his arms, his hands clenched, the line of his mouth bitter, his back turned to those others waiting for a handout.". She had an eye for seeing people who needed and deserved attention. The reason I selected this photographer is because she was about documenting the tragedies and the people who were enduring the brunt of these tragedies, people considered not to have a voice in society because they were poor and helpless. Dorothea changed that with pictures of them in a very vulnerable state and showing the rest of the world who wasn’t suffering what was...