The Peoples Photographer

Dorthea Lange, was a struggling mother whom still fulfilled her career as a “peoples photographer” capturing the life of others and their experiences and portraying the individuals truly. The goal of Lange when documenting the lives of others was to maintain their dignity and humanity. Throughout, Lange’s career she captured individuals that were fighting to survive and support themselves during this tough time period. Lange’s work brought upon empathy and respect, it also opened the public eyes to the lives of others that they might have not ever even thought about.

“Dorothea Lange was an energetic, ambitious photographer, but she also was a moral pilgrim of sorts, ever ready to give us a record of human experience that truly matters: our day-to-day struggles as members of a family, of a neighborhood, of a nation to make do, to take on life as best we can, no matter, the obstacles we face” (Coles 114-115).

Lange was representing the individuals she captured as more than just poverty stricken individuals. Lange not being able to fulfill the domestic side to being a mother and struggling with motherhood allowed her to depict the lives of others so well. Her work showed another side to American society, the incomplete American dream. For example, Dorthea Lange’s project “Migrant Mother” of Florence Thompson showed the strength of Thompson and brought empathy upon the public because as individuals who view the photo you can sense the strength she has a mother taking care of her children in struggling conditions. The photos of Thompson with her children focus on sad facial expressions of the children and the body language of them grasping on to their mother. However, the photos also have meaning within the objects and background in the photo. Specifically in this work, Lange was representing the life of motherhood in harsh conditions. In the picture above, it has a similar tone to the photos of Thompson, because my eyes are drawn to the children being attached to the mother wanting love and help from her, leading me to feel for the mother because I understand the power and strength she needed to have in the conditions they were living in.

Lange’s way of editing her photos provides us with a sense of her point of view and it helped shaped her meanings of the photos she worked with. By cropping and adjusting the photos she took, she was keeping the subjects dignity, and respect because she would crop out objects that she did not think would be important to the overall message of the image. Overall, as a photographer Lange would never stereotype the individuals she would document, and never expressed a bias opinion while also making sure she truly shown the lives of others especially when her work was being brought to the public eye.