Dorothea Lange2018
Politics of Seeing
by Alona Pardo
"Dorothea Lange's photograph, Migrant Mother, is one of the most indelible and recognizable images of the Dust Bowl era. Lange's career stretched far beyond the Great Depression, driven throughout by her compassionate advocacy for the people and land of California. This riveting book opens with Lange's Bay Area portraits of the 1920s and '30s when her photo studio formed a hub for San Francisco's bohemian and artistic elite. It offers a generous overview of her work with the Farm Security Administration, where Lange was the only female photographer documenting the impact of the Depression and Dust Bowl on the west coast, working alongside the likes of Walker Evans, as well as her pictures of Japanese Americans forcibly displaced into internment camps following Pearl Harbor. It also...