Dorothea Lange photos in Oakland reveal history, art and activism
If Dorothea Lange’s mark on the history of photography was profound, her pictures have a continuing effect that is not bound by the borders of the art world.
The Oakland Museum of California possesses an extraordinary trove of works by the woman universally acknowledged as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.
Politics of Seeing, opens Saturday, May 13, with the goal of reaching a new understanding of the artist and the 25,000 negatives, 6,000 prints and myriad other materials she left behind.
No picture more aptly fits the notion of that universal emblem of human need than “Migrant Mother,” one of history’s most famous photographs.
Lange made other photographs of the woman that same day; the biographical and geographic details would apply equally to those pictures, but none of them have the same diagonal rhythms of gesture, harmonies of texture, rotations of heads.
The website of the Library of Congress reproduces two versions of “Migrant Mother.”
Drew Johnson argues that what we most value about Lange — her instinct for classic composition amid the confusion and devastation of the Great Depression — misses a more complex point.
Johnson is particularly keen on providing historical context, while keeping true to the artist’s language, both visual and verbal.
Lange was the only California photographer to be hired by the Farm Security Administration, and the first woman to be tapped for a photography retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.