Dorothea's Eyes by Barb Rosenstock

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer, famous for her Depression-era photographs of migrant and displaced farmers.Dorothea was born in May 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey to Heinrich Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange. She had a brother, Martin. When she was seven years old, Dorothea contracted poliomyelitis which damaged her right leg, leaving it weakened and shorter. This disability was to affect her profoundly for the rest of her life. It also made Dorothea more empathetic to the suffering of others.

Dorothea's father abandoned the family when she was twelve. Later on Dorothea dropped her father's surname of Nutzhorn and adopted her mother's surname of Lange.

She graduated from Wadleigh High School For Girls. In 1913, Dorothea began attending the New York Training School For Teachers but she was more interested in becoming a photographer. So she studied photography at Columbia University and undertook apprenticeships at several New York Studios. In 1917, Dorothea was able to take a class with Charles White at Columbia.

In January 1918, Dorothea and a friend, Florence Ahlstrom decided to undertake a trip around the world. Their journey which began by train, ended quickly in San Francisco when their money was stolen. Dorothea settled in San Francisco, working in a photography studio, meeting other members of the art community in the city and eventually opening up her own portrait studio. In 1920, she married Maynard Dixon, the renowned western painter.

With the onset of the Great Depression and the soup kitchens, employments lines and migrant workers, Dorothea changed her focus from portraiture to the people suffering from the economic crisis. Her photograph of a man looking away from a crowd in a soup kitchen captured the attention of the Federal Government and she was hired by the Farm Security Administration to document the situation of migrant workers, destitute farm families and sharecroppers. It was her picture titled Migrant Mother as well as many others of this era that launched her career as a photographer.

Discussion
Dorothea's Eyes captures Dorothea's story from her point of view focusing on her remarkable ability to see what others miss. Rosenstock suggests this ability was the result of Dorothea's illness as a child which left her with a damaged leg and made her want to hide. She preferred to be invisible, offering her the opportunity to view life in a way not possible for most people. She felt she really "saw" the world as it is.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

Rosenstock describes Dorothea as watchful, curious describing this ability as seeing with her eyes and her heart. As a person who was ignored in her childhood because of her disability, Dorothea felt a strong empathy for the poor of the Depression Era, people whose struggles were being ignored by society. Her photographs opened the eyes of Americans to the suffering of the poor, the misplaced farmers and the unemployed. Dorothea's photographs humanized these people. In some cases, her photographs helped bring relief in the form of food to people who were starving. Although Rosenstock doesn't mention this in her picture book story, Dorothea went on to capture the internment of Japanese Americans in special camps, a practice that was undertaken during World War II simply because of their Asian heritage. Her photographs were confiscated by the American Army and were not seen for decades, even by Dorothea herself.

Accompanying Rosenstock's text are the illustrations by award-winning illustrator, Gerard Dubois, who created them using acrylic on paper and as well as digitally. The author includes a time line of Dorothea Lange's life, some of her remarkable photographs, a short note about her, a Selected Bibliography, Sources for Quotations and suggestions For Further Reading.

You can read more about the story of the Migrant Mother here.

Book Details:

Dorothea's Eyes by Barb Rosenstock
Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Calkins Creek         2016

image credit: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/stories/articles/2014/4/14/migrant-mother-dorothea-lange/