W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #dorothealange,#americanworker

As an artist, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) didn’t catch my attention until I saw an exhibition “Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing” at the Barbican in London in 2018. There were more great photographs in it than any other single artist exhibition I can think of. It was insightfully curated by Alona Pardo who traced the arc of Lange’s career from studio portraitist in San Francisco to documentarian in the Dust Belt, creator of classic images like "White Angel Breadline”, 1933 and “Migrant Mother", 1936.

“I knew I was looking at something. You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you. And you just hope you will have enough time to get it organized in a fraction of a second on that tiny piece of sensitive film.”*1

American photographers appreciate and tell the story of the American worker best. Lange recognized the strong core and resilience evidenced in her line up of seven Oregon farmers seen here. The strong verticals give the seeming casual stance of the workers a stolid uprightness. The men seem so comfortable in their own skin, standing cross armed and at ease, grounded. The image is simple and direct.and offers up imagined tales of hard work, struggle and lives fully lived.

Lange’s final exhibition in her lifetime was organized by John Szarkowski at the MoMA in 1966. It included this statement from the artist wanting “to encourage persons interested in using a camera to concern themselves with making photographs of the life which surrounds them, to raise his [or her] sights to include what’s going on about us, to use the camera to show this awareness.”’2

An American original.  

*1 Milton Meltzer: “Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life” p.167 Syracuse University Press; (2000)

*2 Dorothea Lange, concluding statement for 1966 MoMA retrospective

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#somereallygoodones, #dorothealange, #americanoriginal, #farmers, #oregon