EMILY BERMAN

Dorothea Lange was born in 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. During her young life, she came down with polio, which left crippling effects on her after the periods of exhausting fevers and horrific pain. Her father left when she was 12, forcing her to get a job at the New York Public Library. She attended Public School 62, but often skipped school and never did her homework. She instead started looking at pictures. She did not get a very good education, she barely graduated high school, but she did get the education she needed to become a photographer. She began working under Arnold Genthe who had a very well known clientele including President Roosevelt. She liked to examine people and capture their suffering with her camera. For example, she captured the streets of 15 million people being out of work. She wanted to document the human condition which at this point was depression and suffering. She took all her pictures on experiences, either when working in fields, working for the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, etc... She eventually got very sick and could not work much. When she could however, she continued taking pictures and writing essays about her experiences. She died of cancer on October 11, 1965. After that in 1984, she was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum, after her work with the Museum of Modern Art to produce a retrospective show on her work.