Why is dorothea lange photographs famous

There was a sort of equality about it. Perhaps we can understand this moment better if we take it in stages, almost as the two women experienced it. And is the spontaneous documentary quality of the experience she asserts also true?

Let us imagine her driving up in her nice car to this huddled camp of old beat-up vehicles. That action alone would have taken several minutes. Let us say that she saw Florence Owens Thompson and her children and then took out her camera. The world Lange lived in is not the snap-and-shoot world we occupy today. The Graflex Series D that she used came in a large box, which she would have had to open.

She would then have had to open the camera itself, turning a knob to expand the accordion sides that connected the lens to the body. If she had a tripod, she would have had to set that up.

She would have had to set the manual focus, lens opening, and shutter speed. Usually that would involve using a separate light meter to assess the available light. But perhaps she would intuitively know the proper settings after years of being a photographer. Then she would, for each shot, have had to insert a pre-loaded film cartridge into the back. If she did not have any pre-loaded cartridges, she would have had to sit in the car and load the film in the total darkness of a black fabric bag.

For each shot she would have had to pull out a protective cover, shoot the picture, replace the protective cover, and then pull the cartridge out. In other words, the simple act of taking the picture would have been far more deliberate and cumbersome than her account implies. And the session must have taken longer than she recalled. We happen to know that she took a total of six photographs not five as she later stated. What is clear from them is that this encounter was anything but spontaneous.

The impression Lange gives us is that she acted as a removed documentarian. But the reality is richer: the final photograph was staged for maximum effect and then altered in the darkroom for aesthetic reasons.

The final photo will omit this older girl, who does not seem to fit into the message this picture was designed to convey. The girl is wearing clothing that is not frayed or worn out. Her hair is a bit blowsy, but a headband adds some fashion. The position of the girl is almost certainly posed, and her direct regard creates an uncomfortable awareness of the moment. All of the subjects are looking at Lange, and the two younger girls are smiling.

A second photo has the camera moving a few steps closer. We can tell it is the second in the sequence because the rocking chair has been moved into the tent and the mark its rocker rails have left are clearly imprinted in the sandy earth.

Again, we have to assume that Lange asked that the chair be moved. In the previous photo, a car jack on the chair prevented the girl from sitting on it in the normal manner. That object has been removed and is no longer visible.

One younger girl is still staring at Lange, while the other has gone to the right of the tent, with only her legs and hat visible. Are the teenage girl and younger girl now attempting to avoid being photographed?

Several more photographs were taken closer up to Florence Owens Thompson. One is a more frontal and horizontal portrait in a Madonna pose, with her eyes averted from the camera. In this one we can see that she is wearing a wedding ring, which perhaps disrupts the assumptions built into a story about a single mother alone.

Another photo shows her breastfeeding, revealing a white breast in contrast to her darker, sun-exposed skin. In terms of their interactions, the woman might have been asked by Lange to breastfeed the baby.

The duration of the encounter — the supposed quick snaps leading to the iconic photograph — had to have been longer than 10 minutes, in order to allow the baby who is sleeping in all the other pictures to wake up and begin feeding. The final picture, the iconic one, is the most obviously posed. The two girls now face away from the camera. The woman has put her hand to her chin in a contemplative gesture often used in paintings featuring philosophers and other thinkers.

The angel was Lois Jordan, a working-class woman who relied only on unsolicited donations to run the breadline. Seeing the suffering directly was partly what drove Lange to leave her studio and use her camera as a tool for social change. This image became the most iconic picture of the Depression.

Lange photographs migrant pea-picker, year-old Florence Thompson with three of her children. The farm crops had frozen and there was no work for the homeless pickers, so Thompson sold the tires from her car to buy food, which was supplemented with birds killed by her children. In this poignant image where Thompson looks through the camera, Lange demonstrates her skill of being able to see her subjects both as individuals and as representatives for bigger issues.

Migrant Mother became a symbol of strife and fortitude to millions of other Americans at the time. After this image was taken Lange informed the authorities of the plight of the pea-picking camp and they sent 20, pounds of food.

When setting up a shot, Lange often moved slowly, fiddling with her camera and the lighting until her subjects relaxed. She can be reached through her website, noramcgreevy.

Virtual Travel A Smithsonian magazine special report. Gift of Paul S.