Dorethea Lange - Wonderful Woman No. 57

Dorethea Lange - 1895–1965
American Photographer and Photographic Journalist

Added to the album by a wonderful man called Gavin

I love when people add suggestions of women to the album. I also love when I do not know very much about the person suggested, researching what makes these women wonderful, inspirational and aspirational has become a real joy, the research and writing currently my favourite hobby.

Before Gavin suggested her, I had never heard to name Dorethea Lange, though having now looked at her work, I think it is entirely possible that I have seen her photographs without knowing who had taken them.

During the Great Depression in 1930s America, Dorethea ceased working as a portrait photographer and took her camera out to capture what was happening in the world around her. She photographed the poor and the hungry, homeless migrant workers, exploitation and suffering in rural areas. She would often send her photographs to the press free of charge, wanting the world to see the true horror and human suffering in the hope that her documentation might be able to bring about change and an end to their plight.

Dorethea's most iconic image of this era was titled The Migrant Mother. It featured a woman huddled in a makeshift tent with her three children, dirty, malnourished and homeless. The photograph is regarded by many as a defining portrait of the depression era, accurately documenting the harshest point in modern America's history.

At the time of the second World War, Doethea reappeared as a photojournalist, capturing the forced evacuation of Japanese people in America after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The photographs depicted Japanese Americans, including children, being rounded up, detained without charge and sent to prison concentration camps.

Here was a woman who went out of her way to document and expose the most uncomfortable truths to the world, a brave, selfless and extremely wonderful choice to have made.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
Dorothea Lange