Disability History & Awareness Month: Dorothea Lange: America’s Greatest Documentary Photographer
Office of the Governor Texas sent this bulletin at 10/16/2012 08:30 AM CDTCommittee on People with Disabilities
Disability History & Awareness Month: Dorothea Lange: America’s Greatest Documentary Photographer
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) has been called the greatest American documentary photographer. She is best known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. She contracted polio at age seven, which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp. “It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” Lange once said of her altered gait. “I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.” The insightful and compassionate photographs of Dorothea Lange have exerted a profound influence on the development of modern documentary photography. Lange’s concern for people, her appreciation of the ordinary, and the striking empathy she showed for her subjects made her unique among photographers of her day. In 1935, Lange began her landmark work for the California and Federal Resettlement Administrations (later the Farm Security Administration).
Collaborating with her second husband, labor economist Paul Schuster Taylor, she documented the troubled exodus of farm families escaping the dust bowl as they migrated West in search of work. Lange's documentary style achieved its fullest expression in these years, with photographs such as “Migrant Mother” becoming instantly recognized symbols of the migrant experience.
Although the coming of World War II brought an end to Lange’s Farm Security Administration work, the war opened a new chapter in her life as a photographer. During the War, Lange documented the forced relocation of Japanese American citizens to internment camps, recorded the efforts of women and minority workers in wartime industries at California shipyards, and covered the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco.
- From: Oakland Museum of California: http://museumca.org/global/art/collections_dorothea_lange.html
October is Persons with Disabilities History and Awareness Month in Texas. Each workday in October 2012, the Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities will post a daily Disability History Fact highlighting the accomplishments of people with disabilities or important dates and events related to the history of people with disabilities. These daily history facts will be presented to celebrate “Persons with Disabilities History and Awareness Month” in Texas. Learn more about disability history: http://governor.state.tx.us/disabilities/resources/disability_history/
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