Famous Photographer #17: Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange is best known for taking pictures during the Depression era and for her work for the Farm Security Administration. Her photography showed the consequences of the Great Depression and she influenced documentary photography. Lange went to Columbia University and studied photography. After school, she opened a successful portrait studio in San Francisco. She was employed with Resettlement Administration and later the Farm Security Administration because of her pictures of unemployed and homeless people. Her images became icons of the Depression era. Lange took pictures of the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans after the attack of Pearl Harbor for the War Relocation Authority. In 1952, she co-founded the magazine Aperture. After Lange died, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.