Product Description

This volume - investigating the work of a particular photographer, in this case, Dorothea Lange - comprises a 4000-word essay by an expert in the field, 55 photographs presented chronologically, each with a commentary, and a biography of the featured photographer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #430934 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Synopsis
This volume - investigating the work of a particular photographer, in this case, Dorothea Lange - comprises a 4000-word essay by an expert in the field, 55 photographs presented chronologically, each with a commentary, and a biography of the featured photographer.

Customer Reviews

Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange

Another one in the excellent Phaidon 55 series: this collection of 55 photographs accompanied by a short biographical text is a good introduction to Dorothea Lange's work.

Dorothea Lange is predominately a photographer of people. Even her landscape photographs depict the human influence on landscape: a bulldozed landscape later to be flooded under a dam, a house in deeply ploughed fields, people camping under a roadside billboard etc. Lange is known foremost for her photographs of American migrant workers during the Depression. The majority of the photographs in this book concentrate on people, especially the dispossessed. The book leaves me with a profound sense of dignity. This collection also contains the iconic photograph of the Migrant Mother & her children (sometime referred to as the Migrant Madonna) taken in California in 1936.

Her apparently documentary photographs have an elegance of composition that brings them far beyond simple recordings of the period. Equally moving is the series of photographs of Japanese Americans relocated into internment camps during 1942. For Lange there was a clearly political aspect to her photography. By using the camera she was recording and commenting on her contemporary environment and drawing attention to it to enable change.

The majority of the photographs included date from the mid-thirties to early forties. The later pictures share her same compassionate vision. As an introduction to her work I would highly recommend this small book.

Beautiful
This book is great value for money. Beautiful photographs from one of the best black and white photographers. Amazing portraits accompanied by text on the photo and the story behind the photo. If this an average example of the Phaidon series I will be buying a lot more!

An excellent snapshot of USA life
I love photographs as a way of capturing culture. This book gave a superb overview of USA during and around the time of the depression. My only knowledge of Dorothea prior to this was the "Migrant Mother" photograph on the front cover. I will definately buy more of these little and very inexpensive books, I just need to decide who next.