Analysis of Two Pictures by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange is among the America's the majority of renowned documentary professional photographers. Yet her works can not be thought about as "simply" documental. Lnge's capability to demonstrate the inner world of her heroes and her skillful photographic methods placed her operate in the middle in between photography and art. In this paper I will try to review and examine 2 Lange's photos: "Human Erosion in California" ("Migrant Mother") and "Kid and Her Mom". I am going to analyze them in terms of style, importance and influence on future Lange's career and development of the art of photography.

"Human Disintegration in California" and "Kid and Her Mom" are separated with the duration of three years being made in 1936 and 1939 respectively. This was a time when Lange had to do with forty and her talent grew reaching its highpoint. At that time she made her name as a social critic, as her matter of primary concern was the fate of poor and dispossessed people.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified writer

Proficient in: Art

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

"Human Disintegration in California" is probably her most popular photo touching this style. More broadly, Lange had an interest in individuals as they are and people in various circumstances.

The "Child and Her Mom" is more a mental than social work, or, better to say, a deal with human psychology in a stagnating society. Here Lange could use her experience she got working with Maynard Dixon and in the picture studio to develop her own initial style. The image that later became known as "Human Disintegration in California" or "Migrant Mom" was initially made in California in 1936.

This picture that ended up being almost a renowned vision of the Great Anxiety portrays Florence Owens Thompson, a Cherokee lady whose partner died in 1932 leaving her with five children and expecting the sixth child.

Describing their meeting Lange wrote: "I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. " Lange has made several pictures of the same model to find the best perspective. The most famous of the pictures she made demonstrates a prematurely aged woman sitting in a camp with two underage children cuddling to their mother. The woman looks both tensed and tired.

Her look can not be called desperate, she rather seems to be disappointed and desolated. A woman can not afford herself to become frustrated as she has to care of the babies. Despite of all her grieves she looks strong and decisive. This picture places a model in the centre while the details of the background are unimportant. Much later Thompson told that Langer promised her not to publish the picture and to send her a copy, yet she did neither. Officially the picture was made for the government and Lange never received royalties for it, but this work was a landmark that contributed greatly to her success.

20 000 pounds of food arrived to the camp where the picture was made after publication of the picture, but Thompson has not received any since she had already moved in search of work . Durden observes that many of Lange’s pictures “focus on the expressive potential of the body’s gesture” . This is true for the “Migrant Mother”, but this feature of Lange’s work can be most obviously illustrated by the “Child and Her Mother”. The picture was made in 1939 in the Yakima Valley near Washington. It is less famous than the “Migrant Mother”, yet not less brilliant as it presents another aspect of Lange’s talent.

“Child and Her Mother” is a socio-psychological work combining the view of a teenage frustration with social blunders. From the artistic point of view Lange used a different composition in this picture. In contrast to static “Migrant Mother” this photograph presents movement and tensed rhythm. A child, who can also be perceived as a young girl downcasts her eyes linking against the wire fence while carefully observed by her mother. Both stand on a sandy desert land burned by sun, but the mother attempts to cover her eyes while the daughter keeps them open.

It appears that the girl is trying to escape the life that her mother has lived in order to overcome sadness and poverty . Lange’s work in the times of the Great Depression are not unique. Not less famous are, for example, works of Arthur Rothstein. Yet Lange is distinguished by her profound sympathetic understanding not of the social phenomena, but of the people suffering from it. This is a kind of “female view” of the Great Depression as an event that revealed the hidden sides of people’s characters. For this reason Lange’s pictures would hardly be lost in the stream of her contemporaries’ works.

Works Cited: 1. Partridge, Elizabeth. Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange. Puffin, 1991; 2. Meltzer, Milton. Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life. Syracuse University Press; 1st Syracuse University Press Ed edition, 2000; 3. Durden, Mark. Dorothea Lange. Phaidon Press, 2006; 4. Spirn, Anne Winston. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field. University Of Chicago Press, 2008; 5. Maksel, Rebecca. “Migrant Madonna”. Smithsonian magazine, March 2002. http://www. smithsonianmag. com/arts-culture/Migrant_Madonna. html retrieved April 27, 2009.