ABSTRACT
“Use the camera as though tomorrow you would be stricken blind,” Dorothea Lange once stated, and she lived her life this way. After her collapses at World War II’s end, she could not photograph for five years. Chronic illness remained. Though Lange had often criticized the “success boys,” famous photographers working for the glossy photographic weeklies who had expense account budgets to burn and paid researchers, writers, and editors at their call, she now put her hat in the ring. Lange received increasing attention from museums, particularly the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), photography’s greatest champion, which pushed to see photography as an art form. Lange’s photography formed the backbone to another Steichen exhibition in 1962, “The Bitter Years.” Nearly half of the two hundred images were by Lange. Lange confronted new physical and intellectual challenges when Paul Taylor’s expertise in land redistribution was called on to address global concerns.
