Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895, Dorothea Lange studied photography under such great artists as Arnold Genthe and Clarence White. After operating a portrait studio in San Francisco for twelve years, Lange was commissioned by the California State Emergency Relief Administration to photograph migrant agricultural workers. From 1935 to 1942 she photographed for Roy Stryker's Farm Security Administration (FSA). It was during this time that she photographed such powerful well-known images as Migrant Mother. In the fifties, Lange photographed for Life magazine, collaborating with Ansel Adams on an essay and exhibition about the Mormons in Utah in 1953 and with Pirkle Jones in 1956 on the "Death of a Valley" project. Although Life did not run the story, Lange and Jones put together an exhibition and publication (Aperture, 1960), which met with both popular and critical success. From her documentation of California's migratory workers who fled dust and drought in the Great Plains and Southwest to seek a new life in the West to her telling images of the desperate condition of the sharecroppers of the South, she sought to portray the social turmoil and injustice caused by the economic upheaval of the time. Lange died in California in 1965.
2007: - “Sus ojos les delatan”, Fundación Foto Colectania, Barcelona - “After Image : Social Documentary Photography in the 20th century”, NGV National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne 2006: - “1935-1943”, The Open Museum of Photography, Tel-Aviv - Dorothea Lange, Gendell Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA - “Bound for Glory, America in color: 1939-1943”, Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands 2005: - “Colecção Fotográfica do Concello de Vigo”, Centro Portugues de Fotografia, Porto, Portugal - “Reinstallation of The Museum of Modern Art's Collection”, MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2004: - Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, California - Amerika Haus, Munih
Recent auctions: 2006: Sotheby’s New York, April,22 Sale N08189 “Ex-Slave With a Long Memory”, 22,000 USD Villa Grisebach Auktionen, Berlin, November,30 Villa Grisebach Auktionen, Berlin, May, 26 2005: Bassenge Photoauktionen, Berlin, November, 21 Photo L.A., Los Angeles, USA, January, 20
