ABSTRACT
Dorothea Lange took an unexpected turn that made her, ultimately, a world-famous photographer. She had dabbled in other forms of photography such as local scene and landscape in the 1920s. But in the early 1930s, as she neared forty, Lange turned her camera on the Depression as she encountered it in the Bay area. Lange’s thriving portrait business also diminished. In 1932 Lange earned a third of what she had made the previous two years. In 1931, believing that the Depression was straining her already difficult relationship with Maynard Dixon, she decided that they should take a trip with their children to his beloved Southwest. In the late fall of 1931, they left Taos because mountain cold and snow made daily life too difficult. Lange maintained the trip rejuvenated, but she and Dixon could not rekindle their earlier happiness. In Lange’s words, “the outside world was in smithereens,” with the “terrors of the Depression,” making people “shocked and panicky.”
