WORDS AND PICTURES
Dorothea Lange's Masterful Exhibit at MoMA
Fundamentally one of the greatest female photographers of her time, Dorothea Lange has remained at the forefront of the world of photography for generations. Migrant Mother, an image familiar to many, even those unaware of the backstory, first found its fame many years after its initial capture in 1936. Now, it is being celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art in New York along with many others. Words & Pictures, a multi-media exploration, frames Dorothea Lange’s photographic history, gripping onto nostalgia and the true resilience of the American spirit.
It was in 1933 that Dorothea Lange began her journey into the world of photography, which is also where the viewer first steps into the exhibition, becoming acquainted with Lange’s images of the sunny streets of San Francisco. From there we are taken through her politically-mounting career, from derelict farming towns grappled by the Great Depression, to the internment camps of suppressed Japanese-Americans, to her work with the first public defenders for low-income Americans in Oakland, California.
The exhibition will showcase an immense 100-plus images from the late photographer’s oeuvre. While many photographs of Lange’s are emblematic and widely recognized, Words & Pictures also explores some images which have been seen by less eyes and are yet to be explored on a wider scale. While the exhibition is somewhat chronological, the order of events are at times relaxed throughout, laid out in a meandering manner.
A political heroine, one of Lange’s greatest aspirations was to incur social change through her work in photography. By revealing images of some of the darkest parts of the county previously hidden to the world, Lange succeeded in her endeavors, and still does, years after her life has ended. At the close of her life, Lange remarked, “All photographs—not only those that are so-called ‘documentary,’ and every photograph really is documentary and belongs in some place, has a place in history.” Lange has truly seated herself in history and remains to evoke emotion and inspiration through her portrayals of true hardship, tribulation, and the innate human ability to persevere.
Words & Pictures will be available for viewing at the MoMA from February 9 to May 9, 2020.
