ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what happened to the reputations of two farm security administration-office of war information photographers during the 1960s and 1970s when the evaluative categories by which photographers had been previously judged as art or "social documentary" or "journalistic" were collapsing. The proximity of Lange and Evans to the art world during the 1960s when photography was being swept into the museum was similar in many ways, and historically both had been evaluated according to a similar standard of documentary photography. The photographs that were said to be "classic Dorothea Lange's" were interpreted as demonstrating her ability to give evidence while she created pictures "that have remarkable power as artistic statements as well". Based on institutional recognition Dorothea Lange's reputation was similar to that of Walker Evans until approximately 1966, the time of her retrospective at museum of modern art. Lange's reputation remains grounded in public renown through the continued circulation of her photographs and occasional small exhibits.
