Book description
We all know Dorothea Lange's iconic photos-the Migrant Mother holding her child, the shoeless children of the Dust Bowl-but now renowned American historian Linda Gordon brings them to three-dimensional life in this groundbreaking exploration of Lange's transformation into a documentarist. Using Lange's life to anchor a moving social history of…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Dorothea Lange as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I became interested in Dorothea Lange last year when I picked up a compilation of her photographs documenting the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. These images had been censored by the US government for decades, kept under wraps.
One of them depicts a young boy seated on the stoop of his barracks, engrossed in a comic book, one that happens to have been published by my great-uncle, the subject of my recent book!
Driven to learn all I could about the circumstances of this photograph, I read Linda Gordon’s wonderful biography of Lange. A master of the form,…
In the 1930s, Dorothea Lang photographed poor and migrant families across the United States. She documented the devastating impact of the Great Depression, contributing to raising national awareness about the consequences of poverty. In this outstanding and engaging biography, Linda Gordon tells the story of her life and work and how her photographs were part of a larger political movement to transform and expand social protection to US citizens.
From Ángela's list on the history of the welfare state.
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German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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