Born
Dorothea Nutzhorn New Jersey on May 26, 1895. Dorothea
developed polio in 1902, at age 7 which left her right
leg with a permanent limp. When she was 12 years old,
her father abandoned her and her mother, leading her
to adopt her mother's maiden name.
Dorothea Lange studied photography under Clarence H.
White. She was informally apprenticed to several New
York photography studios, including that of the famed
Arnold Genthe. In 1918, she moved to San Francisco,
where she opened a successful portrait studio.
With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange turned
her camera lens from the studio to the street. Her
studies of unemployed and homeless people captured the
attention of local photographers and led to her
employment with the federal Resettlement
Administration (RA), later called the Farm Security
Administration (FSA).
In December 1935, she divorced Dixon and married
agricultural economist Paul Schuster Taylor, Professor
of Economics at the University of California,
Berkeley. Taylor educated Lange in social and
political matters, and together they documented rural
poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and
migrant laborers for the next five years.
From 1935-1939, Lange's work for the RA and FSA
brought the plight of the poor sharecroppers,
displaced farm families and migrant workers to public
attention. Dorothea Lange's poignant images
became icons of the era.
Dorothea Lange's 1936, Migrant Mother, Florence Owens
Thompson better know as "Migrant Mother" is most
certainly Lange's best-known photograph
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