Today would have been Dorothea Lange’s 125th birthday. “Dorothea Lange and other photographers of the 1930s and '40s created an indelible record of everyday life in difficult times. The Great Depression caused many photographers to consider the camera as an instrument of social change.
Foremost among this group was Berkeley photographer Dorothea Lange, whose intimate pictures of people in distress were driven by a deep personal empathy. She continued her intensely personal work after the Depression, creating series on the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, Irish country life, and postwar suburban California, among many other projects“ (Oakland Museum of California).
Ex-Slave with a Long Memory, 1938
Girl and Cornstalk, c. 1940
Volunteer Land Army, 1944
Mississippi Cotton, 1938
First Braceros, 1942
Images courtesy of Oakland Museum of California.
View a more complete collection of Lange’s work on view now via the Oakland Museum of California website.