Virtual art tour: Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (MoMA)

The Great Depression. Young girl sitting on bench near fireplace with bed in background in a Taos, New Mexico, resettlement farm for Dust Bowl drought refugees, during the Great Depression. Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1935. From Carleton Thomas Anderson: Dorothea Lange – An American Odyssey. The final photo by Dorothea Lange herself displayed in the movie before the concluding montage of Dorothea Lange portraits taken by colleagues.

Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936. Gelatin silver print, printed 1949, 11 1⁄8 × 8 9⁄16” (28.3 × 21.8 cm). Purchase.Filmmaker, Dyanna Taylor: "This photograph has been used and seen so many times that Dorothea once said to me, “it doesn’t belong to me, really, it belongs to the public.” It’s just part of the imagery we think of when we think of the Depression in America. Dorothea had been traveling alone on assignment in California and was heading back toward Berkeley, when she passed a sign that said, “Pea-pickers camp.” She drove on and then began to argue with herself, “Maybe I should go back.” The crops had frozen, and almost everyone was out of work and very hungry. She spotted a woman alone with children. Dorothea took seven negatives of the woman, Florence Thompson, and her children, and the final image is the one that we’ve all come to know so well. When Dorothea returned to Berkeley, she submitted some of the images to the press. The public was very moved by the images, and aid was soon sent down to the pea-pickers camp." Photo and caption from the MoMA website.

Corona lockdown museum visits.
    Virtual visit:
Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures: MoMA. Curator: Sarah Meister.
Online Archive of California: 20.820 photographs / items online.
Library of Congress: 4179 photographs / documents online.
Museum of Modern Art: 311 works online.
Carleton Thomas Anderson: Dorothea Lange – An American Odyssey (year n.a.), a documentary film, 38 min

MoMA introduction: "Toward the end of her life, Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) reflected, “All photographs—not only those that are so called ‘documentary’…can be fortified by words.” Lange paid sharp attention to the human condition, conveying stories of everyday life through her photographs and the voices they drew in. Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures brings iconic works from the collection together with less seen photographs, from her landmark photobook An American Exodus to projects on criminal justice reform. Presenting her work across many contexts—photobooks, Depression-era government reports, newspapers, magazines, poems—and alongside the voices of contemporary artists, writers, and thinkers, the exhibition lets us consider the importance of Lange’s legacy and of words and pictures today."

"This exhibition is currently being presented here as part of our Virtual Views series, as we “museum from home.” Explore iconic works that redefined how we see America with a live Q&A with curator Sarah Meister and photographer Sally Mann, enjoy poetry and artist’s books inspired by Lange, and unravel the mystery around one of the most famous photographs in the world." (MoMA introduction)

AA: Continuing my virtual art exhibition tours I proceed on the MoMA site and get acquainted with the introductions and presentations of the Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures exhibition. The meat is of course in MoMA's collections of 311 works online. In photography, a high quality screen exploration is of course a very decent alternative to a "real life" exhibition.

Dorothea Lange's photographs are powerful seen in this way. I study the MoMA collection and expand the experience with the massive archives of Library of Congress and Online Archive of California.

Visiting museums and galleries, I never view films or videos. In practically every exhibition there are films and videos, usually in a separate screening room. I walk past them as fast as I can. But during the lockdown everything turns upside down. A good film can become the thing itself, because you can stop it and examine the artwork as long as you like.

I am grateful for Carleton Thomas Anderson's film Dorothea Lange – An American Odyssey for a rich and sober portrait of a great personality recording an unknown reality of millions of people. The classic images from the Great Depression are in the heart of her oeuvre. But there is much more, such as the photographed record of the plight of the Japanese-Americans during WWII.

As a photographer Dorothea Lange was an experienced professional with an unusually acute social conscience. She had a unique instinct in finding the telling subject and the right moment. For her, humanity came first, and then the sense of urgency in the topic. Words were essential for the pictures: this is the emphasis of the MoMA exhibition. Art was not the objective, but when it all came together, the result was of exceptional artistic value.