Iconic Photography on Display at the National Gallery of Art
An new exhibit shows previously unseen work by iconic Great Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange.
BY GABRIEL ZAKAIB | FEBRUARY 28 2024 | FOR COMM-320
A viewer at the Dorothea Lange: Seeing People exhibit in the National Gallery of Art. The exhibit closes March 31. Photo by Gabriel Zakaib
A soon-closing National Gallery of Art exhibit frames iconic Great Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange through her portraiture of America’s economic, racial and migration challenges.
The exhibit, Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, also displays Lange’s lesser known portraiture and investigates how it influenced her innovative documentary style.
“The premise of the exhibition was to connect Lange’s work and training as a studio photographer with the portraiture she’s best known for,” National Gallery of Art Photography Curator Philip Brookman said. The work shown highlights Lange’s transformation from a studio photographer for San Francisco elites to a gritty Great Depression documentarian.
Lange’s connections with her subjects through interviews and extensive field notes was innovative at the time and influenced generations of photographers, Brookman said. At the forefront of documentary photography, Lange’s social science approach forged deeper connections between viewers and those depicted in her photographs.
Lange’s innovation opened new windows into the struggles of the Great Depression. Images such as Human Erosion in California, also known as Migrant Mother, show how Lange’s traditional portraiture training manifested in the field.
Lange’s Human Erosion in California (Migrant Mother) photograph on display in the National Gallery of Art. Photo by Gabriel Zakaib
The exhibition also provides an important perspective on American history.
“We learn about the Great Depression in part from photographs that were published from that time. They are kind of like the face of our history,” Brookman said.
Although the news cycle may paint today’s social issues as bleak, Lange’s work reminds us America has faced tough challenges before. The stories Lange documented contribute to an understanding of how people survive a time of deep economic trouble and the conditions needed to alleviate those problems.
In addition to economic and migration challenges, the gallery includes Lange’s documentation of the U.S. Government’s Japanese Internment Camps in 1942, work censored from the public until 2006.
Alexandra Silverthorne, a photography professor at American University, said Lange’s images of the camps acted as an educational prompt for exhibit viewers.
“When I was walking through the gallery, I overheard a family talking about the camps and the history, and it seemed like the images had become a prompt for educating about this injustice,” Silverthorne said.
Silverthorne wished the exhibit included contact sheets, a photographic paper featuring multiple images straight from a roll of film. Photographers often use these to select their final images. To provide a comprehensive look at an artist’s work legacy, viewers must see behind the scenes, which especially includes contact sheets, Silverthorne said.
The exhibition is rooted in 2016 and 2018 gifts of 143 Dorothea Lange photographs from the private collection of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.
The free exhibit closes March 31 and has seen about 100,000 visitors so far. Upcoming National Gallery of Art plans include exhibitions on 1970s documentary photography, portraits by Gordon Parks, and an exploration of photography’s impact on the Black Arts Movement, Brookman said.