Born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1895, Dorothea Lange photographed much of the American life during the era of New Deal and the Great Depression. What helped her to be able to do this was her study of photography at Columbia University. In 1918, she worked at a New York portrait studio. It was here where she started traveling.She was stranded in San Francisco in 1920s. Her husband, Maynard Dixon, and Dorothea traveled to the southwest to capture pictures of Native Americans. She would spend time getting to know her subjects before the camera would start clicking. Her main subjects were depleted migrant workers. She would also take pictures of breadlines and labor strikes. When she was younger, she was diagnosed with Polio. To Lange, this was advantageous. It let her subjects relate to her more on deeper level seeing as she came from a hard time as well. People were kind and she felt ataraxy.Her work was funded by California and the Federal Resettlement Administration, later known as the Farm Security Administration, which was established to take the edge off of poverty in the rural areas. She recorded photos of the Dust Bowl when drought and hard times forced thousands of America farm families to move west in search of work. The photos taken of migrant workers helped draw attention to the dire ways of life in the rural America. These pictures also showed how much they needed direct relief.Dorothea Lange's most familiar work of art, "Migrant Mother, Nimpoma, California, 1936" is hanging in the library of congress. Of her work of this era Lange said: "The good photographer is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one will say, 'how did you do it, where did you find it,' but they would say that such things could be."MIGRANT MOTHER
I learned that photography was a major role in showing how bad the living conditions for some were. It got the message out that people needed help. I love Dorothea Lange's photography. My favorite is a picture of an America concentration camp during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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