DOROTHEA LANGE 1895-1965 - Lot 45

DOROTHEA LANGE 1895-1965 White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, winter 1932-1933. Photograph. Silver print ca.1970, stamped "George Eastman House", captioned and dated in pencil on the back. Image: 24.2 x 19 cm; sheet: 25.2 x 20.3 cm Bibliography: John Szarkowski, "Dorothea Lange", The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, p.20; Therese Thau Heyman, "Celebrating a Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange", The Oakland Museum, 1978, p.57; Milton Meltzer, "Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life", New York, 1978, p.117; "Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime", Aperture, 1982, p.45. In 1932, during the Great Depression that had begun in 1929, Dorothea Lange, observing the homeless unemployed on the streets of San Francisco, abandoned her work as a studio portraitist, deeming it no longer appropriate. During two pivotal years in her life, she photographed situations that depicted the social impact of the urban recession. This innovative work aroused interest in artistic circles and attracted the attention of Paul Schuster Taylor, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. A specialist in the agricultural conflicts of the 1930s, with a particular focus on Mexican migrant workers, Taylor used Lange's photographs to illustrate his articles, before the two began working together in 1935 on behalf of the federal agencies set up under the New Deal. Their collaboration lasted over thirty years.