Dorothea Lange, Migrant Worker on A California Highway, 1935 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

“I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon. I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions.”

–Dorothea Lange / February 1960

Dorothea Lange, presented by Camera, Italian Center for Photography in Torino continues its curcuit into Perugia to the Palazzo della Penna – Centro per le arti contemporanee and Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini in Milan. This landmark exhibition curated by its artistic director Walter Guadagnini and curator Monica Poggi comprises over 200 photographs in the career of Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), one of the great photographers of our time.

Accompanied by a 176-page catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore with texts by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi, the exhibition presents works from a vital period of Lange’s practice, the 1930s and early 1940s, where she documented social conditions that informed the economic and social structure of the United States.

In context, during the period between 1931 and 1939, the southern portions of the United States suffered severe droughts and sandstorms. These events impacted the region’s agriculture leading to the migration of over 300 thousand people to seek work elsewhere. Dorothea Lange was among the group of photographers commissioned by the U.S. government agency Farm Security Administration to document the exodus of farm workers seeking employment on the large Central Valley plantations. Lange, together with the other photographers Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Willard Van Dike, Jack Delano, and Marion Post Wolcott, were dispatched to these affected areas over a three year period. They documented the dramatic situation of the farmers and laborers living there, responding to the urgent call for aid and solidarity with the affected communities. They produced over a quarter million images.

Climate crisis, migration, discrimination. Poverty. These were the themes invoked in Dorothea Lange’s coverage. Now, four generations later, these photographs continue to resound in their portrayal of a time and a people, calling for compassion, inspiring understanding, and invoking hope.

Dorothea Lange, Unemployment Benefits Aid Begins, San Francisco, 1939 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION / IN TOWN

The exhibition at Camera opens in the first room with the Farm Security Administration commissioned series with images setting the scene. In the style of reportage and even street photography, Lange weaves a narrative that reads like a Steinbeck novel, or perhaps more aptly, a parallel account to Walker Evans and James Agee’s seminal collaboration, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Houghton Mifflin, 1941), the book capturing the conditions of sharecropper families during the Great Depression.

The prelude of photographs from IN TOWN are interspersed with wide shots of fields, often barren, the early skyline of San Francisco and bustling street corners, tightening again with views into shop windows, lines outside an employment office, and the homeless of Skid Row who foreshadow the more current and growing homeless situation in today’s urban areas of California and beyond.

Dorothea Lange, Once a Missouri farmer, now a migratory farm laborer on the Pacific Coast. California, 1936 / Acquired from The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. in 1973

Dorothea Lange, Family walking on highway, five children, June 1938 / Works Progress Administration, Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Near Coolidge, Arizona. Migratory cotton picker with his cotton sack slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before returning to work in the field. Coolidge, Arizona, 1940. The New York Public Library / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington

AN AMERICAN EXODUS & JUNGLES

The subsequent rooms chronicle AN AMERICAN EXODUS and JUNGLES, depicting the migratory movement and the destitution of workers. Migratory Cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona, November 1940. The mouth is covered by an open palm. The lines on his hands betray his age. The migrants arrive in fields as barren as the roads that led them there.

Dorothea Lange, (Migrant Mother and Children) Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. 1936. / U.S. Farm Security Administration/ Office of War Information. Prints & Photographs Division

MIGRANT MOTHERS

The exhibition moves to the MIGRANT MOTHERS. The heroine image of the exhibition and the cover to the catalog is Migrant Mother and Children, California, 1936, with the protagonist, Florence Owens Thompson. This photograph has long been revered and considered one of Lange’s most iconic works. The children, tired and turned away over the mother’s shoulders and the baby sleeping serenely in her arm, contrast the piercing gaze of the mother, the concerned brow, her hand raised to her cheek with lines that trace the migrant story. Other shots from the sequence show varied angles and captions that describe further the details of the story: Seven children without food, the empty plates, the bivouac tent behind them, the mother, 32 years old, Nipomo, California, 1936. “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother… I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions… She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed.” –Dorothea Lange

There are stronger compositions in the room, but this photograph in particular speaks to people, invoking the timeless leitmotif of Madonna and Child. However stripped of sanctity, the pathos remains divine.

Dorothea Lange, Home of the Williams’ family. Dead Ox Flat, Malheur County, Oregon. General caption number 67-111, 1939 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Dorothea Lange, Alabama Negro working in field near Eutaw, Alabama. July 1936 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Dorothea Lange, Crossroads General Store, circa 1938 © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland

TOWARDS THE SOUTH & A NEW BEGINNING

The exhibition moves TOWARDS THE SOUTH, with depictions of laborers working for large landowners in vast cotton, tobacco, and corn plantations. The marked social gap of the time was entirely unwitting of the near absolute disparity that would evolve in just four generations.

And still, towards A NEW BEGINNING assumes a different resonance as families are united under new governmental programs that provide a certain minimum by way of accommodations and certain essential services. We begin to see dignity in the faces of workers, reflected in the smiles of children.

Dorothea Lange, Migratory Mexican Field Worker’s Home on the Edge of a Frozen Pea Field, Imperial Valley California, 1937 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Dorothea Lange, A large sign reading “I am an American” placed in the window of a store the day after Pearl Harbor. Oakland, California, 1942. The New York Public Library / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington

I AM AN AMERICAN

The exhibition closes with the series I AM AN AMERICAN displayed in the hall as one large wall that spans the length of all the other rooms. This series depicts the Japanese Internment Camps in America created following the U.S. entry into World Ward II and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Like an appendix, or an aside, this commission by the War Relocation Authority is produced under conditions of governmental censorship. Where at a minimum, a mild premise of propaganda underlies the series as Lange was forbidden from portraying elements which would expose the internment. Such details as barbed wires, guard towers and armed soldiers were not to be seen, and the negatives were appropriated with the assignment resulting in images remaining largely unknown.

Still, the portrayal is humanistic, often depicting the youth at play, or elders in quiet resignation awaiting their relocation. It is the knowledge of the context in hindsight that allows us to see the failure of the system played out in the lives of people.

Dorothea Lange, Manzanar Relocation Center, Manzanar, California, July 3, 1942 © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

Today, we are approaching the centennial of the start of this documentation. In the midst of the 80-100 year cycle of Strauss-Howe’s generation theory, we are rounding out four generations since these portraits and these scenes were captured. There is nothing separating us from those depicted, save but the dignity with which these ancestors survived their condition. Natural disasters, along with social, racial and gender inequalities continue. Seeing the plight of the subjects Lange captured, we can see that her Life and Work are as vital today as when she stood before them.

Despite the appearance of progress and certain gains in social equality and justice, many countries are walking back on basic human rights. Extremist voices have become normalized as talks of reparations are tabled and minority and women’s rights are begin challenged by the privileged class and the failed alphas. In parts of the U.S. there is a veritable rise in the banning of books, and a movement to re-write history and erase the uncomfortable elements and the un-proud moments, to stifle the truth of certain tragedies of our past we cannot forget. And yet, even thinking critically on racial inequality has become forbidden in much of the curriculum of higher learning and being simply aware of social injustices is frowned upon. It is noteworthy, and admirable, that this exhibition is taking place in Italy – a country struggling with its own economic position and faced with migratory issues while a history of dangerous sentiments now resurfaces on the parliamentary floor. War, famine, natural disasters, add to this the global pandemic and a more heightened climate emergency – this is where we are.

Dorothea Lange, Casa Grande Project, (Farm Security Administration) Arizona. Large-scale corporate farming by sixty-two families who divide the profits. The children in this group come from eight different states. June, 1938 / Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The photograph of children running in the opening spread of the catalog is simply captioned: Casa Grande Project, (Farm Security Administration) Arizona. Large-scale corporate farming by sixty-two families who divide the profits. The children in this group come from eight different states. June, 1938. We see the tire tracks on the unpaved road, the cliché of children running in excitement after the visitor, bidding farewell to the near messianic passage. This innocence brings closure to the Migrant Mother and hints at the hope of a new generation. Lange was sent out to document the people, the economic situation, the plight of the migrant workers or the daily lives of the detainees in the relocation camps; the resulting photographs from this compassionate gaze into the human condition remind us of who we are and where we come from.

Dorothea Lange. Tales of Life and Work
July 19 – October 8, 2023 / Camera, Italian Center for Photography
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Dorothea Lange. The Other America
October 21, 2023 – February 4, 2024 / Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa
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Dorothea Lange
December 14, 2024 – March 23, 2025 / Palazzo della Penna – Centro per le arti contemporanee
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Dorothea Lange
May 13 – October 19, 2025 / Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini, Milan
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