Biography
Dorothea Lange was an American Photographer and photojournalist best known for her Depression-era work completed for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Originally from New York City, her career in photography began when she moved to San Francisco in the 1920s and started taking portraits of the Bay Area elite. Her subjects quickly changed with the emergence of the Great Depression, when millions of Americans became homeless and traveled in old, dilapidated cars or trucks, wandering from place to place to follow the crops. Lange began to photograph these people, often traveling to the areas where they camped, to document their lives. Although her photographs are exhibited in Art Museums, Lange had little interest in classifying them as art: she made them to effect social change. Lange's photographic studies of the unemployed and homeless captured the attention of the media, who would report on the devastation and hunger she witnessed and often resulted in government aid for those she photographed. Her work as a photojournalist continued after the Great Depression with pictures of Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Lange’s commitment to social justice and her faith in the power of photography remained constant throughout her life.