Visual stories: Documenting life with Dorothea Lange

Born in New Jersey in 1895, the photographer Dorothea Lange influenced documentary photography, to which she gave decisive impetus, particularly as a form of social photography. Lange's photographs are not primarily characterized by the desire to express a particular artistic aesthetic, but rather focus on the subject, usually people from poor or deprived backgrounds, in order to make poverty, outcast status or despair tangible in visual stories.

From outsider to world-famous photographer: Dorothea Lange

The background to Lange's photographic commitment to all those who are excluded or forgotten by society can be found in her own biography. Due to a physical handicap and her family's social situation, Lange was the victim of bullying during her school years and was considered an outsider. But it was precisely this outsider role that enabled her to observe social life in her surroundings from a distance, to process it and ultimately to translate it photographically into visual stories.

At the age of 18, she made the decision to become a photographer and initially concentrated on portrait photography. She organized various internships for herself with well-known photographers and completed a degree in photography at Columbia University in 1917, which brought her into contact with Clarence H. White, a well-known representative of the Photo Session movement, among others. Unlike White, however, Lange regarded the photograph not only as an artistic medium, but also as one that could be used to demand and achieve social change.

In 1919, Dorothea Lange opened her own photo studio in San Francisco. She soon became famous, particularly for her socially critical documentary photography, and worked with various authorities and institutions to document the poverty of migrant workers during the US Depression, for example. Dorothea Lange died after a serious illness on October 11, 1965 in San Francisco.

Anyone who, like Dorothea Lange, travels to document the lives of other people not only needs photographic sensitivity, but also reliable equipment that can withstand everyday use. A robust, water-repellent camera bag not only protects your equipment, but also supports inconspicuous work in the field - even under challenging conditions.

Making reality visible: Documentary photography

The term "documentary photography" essentially covers two types of photographic documentation:

1. photographs taken as part of scientific research projects or to document products and results.

2. photographs that record the life and culture of a society, a region or certain ethnically or socially defined groups as historical documents; war reporting can also be classified here.

Lange's first known documentary photograph was taken in 1926 during a visit to the Indian reservations, where she photographed a Hopi Indian. When the Great Depression hit America three years later, Lange became actively involved in helping people affected by poverty, documenting their stories and experiences through her photography. Lange also captured the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 in impressive images.

Giving people a face and dignity: visual stories from the large-format camera

In her pictures, Lange tries to make the stories of the people she photographs visible. Her visual stories often follow the principle of "pars pro toto": an initially inconspicuous detail or detail stands for the whole, which represents the background or context of the image.

She rarely found starting points and motifs for her social photography by chance. The photographs were usually preceded by conversations with the people she was later to photograph, and she made notes in keywords of the content of the conversation, which included emotions, worries and fears as well as what constituted a person's dignity in all their misery. On behalf of the Resettlement Administration and the later Farm Security Administration, Lange documented living conditions in rural America in particular.

Longer reportages or trips require storage space and flexibility. A multifunctional rucksack that combines a camera, interchangeable lenses, notebook and even a laptop compartment ensures order - whether on dusty country roads or in urban archives.

Understanding life and documenting life

One of Dorothea Lange's most famous photographs is a picture entitled "Migrant Mother". The photo shows a mother (Florence Owens Thomson), characterized by poverty and hopelessness, with her hungry children. It was taken in March 1936 and published in the San Francisco News along with other photographs from the poverty-stricken and hungry pea-picking camp. The publication is said to have led to food supplies being sent to the region the very next day.

A print of the picture, which is now on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, was sold at auction in 1998 for around 250,000 dollars.

Social photography as an emotional appeal

Poverty, social inequality and the outcasts of society are among Lange's themes in social photography. She documented the fates of individuals as well as photographing specific groups, including dockworkers, the homeless and migrant workers.

One of the special features of Lange's images is that her visual stories are not characterized by political activism, but by insight, understanding and compassion. They do not provide "arguments" for or against a political statement, but rather function as a direct appeal to humanity, triggering a spontaneous desire to help. As such, her photos leave a certain amount of room for interpretation and were/are nevertheless used by various groups to underpin their own positions on social issues with emotional images.

Technique and talent: Dorothea Lange's influence on the history of photography

Dorothea Lange made history through her photography and significantly expanded and inspired the history of photography, particularly in the field of social photography and documentary photography.

Until the 1950s, she mostly used a Graflex camera, a heavy large-format camera with fast shutter speeds; she later switched to a 35 mm camera. The typical characteristics of her photography include

- the extensive avoidance of subsequent editing of the photographs;
- the intensive examination of the places and people she photographed;
- the creation of historical or temporal references;
- the intensive use of elements such as light, shadow and textures;
- an image composition that shows the real in sections and uses diagonals or geometric shapes to direct the eye;
- editing techniques that focus on the essentials, which can also be meaningful details such as a safety pin holding together a little boy's makeshift patched clothes.

In reportage work, every second often counts. A secure camera strap with cut protection ensures that the camera is worn comfortably and is ready for use immediately in critical moments. At the same time, it offers inconspicuous protection in busy urban scenes.

Following her own principles of documenting the real and giving it an emotional visual language, Lange found herself in conflict with what she described as contemporary photography, which was "fleeing" from reality, at the beginning of the 1950s. The world was now full of good photographers, she judged in 1952 in an essay published together with her son, but in fact a good photographer had to be full of the world.

Lange's personal collection of around 25,000 negatives and some 6,000 images was donated to the Oakland Museum of California in 1966.