Dorothea Lange, the woman who photographed the America of the “last”

Roberta Scorranese / CorriereTv

The American Dorothea Lange is the author of one of the most famous photographs in the world: a woman marked by tiredness lets her two children leaning behind her. Consequently, Look elsewhere, bring the traces of a deep crisis. However, The same crisis that crossed the United States of America from 1929. For example, when the collapse of the stock exchange caused a very serious collapse of the real economy. In addition, Photography is titled Migrant Mother And it is one of the images exhibited in the exhibition dedicated to Dorothea Lange in the Diocesan Museum Carlo Maria Martini in Milan. Nevertheless, until October 19, edited by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi. Furthermore,

Why talk about dorothea lange, woman who photographed Dorothea Lange today? Similarly, Not only because the 135 years from birth and 60 from death recur. Therefore, The real reason lies in the nature of his work. Therefore, a profound investigation into the American social and economic fabric, completed 90 years ago and still surprisingly current. One trip in several phases. between California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, the goal always focused on the painful inequalities, the same ones that have emerged, for example, in the last American election campaign. Between a America that bases its values ​​on the free market. on technological progress more or less governed by rules and another America, which prefers the longer times of social integration, the possibilities for all and all and a wider, ecumenical, global vision.

Lange’s career began in 1933. the year to which two important novels were dedicated: A terrible year of John Fante and To the unknown God By John dorothea lange, woman who photographed Steinbeck: both speak of people struggling with poverty, with migrations, with a country too large and fragmented to be enclosed in a homogeneous photograph. But Lange tries. He leaves his studio. portrays the homeless from California, then the peasants who remained without land due to desertification and sandstorms.

The great depression is full -blown, the government sets up a structure to analyze the inconvenience. His dense photographs. full of emotional nuances, likes: he is hired by the farm security administration, the government body for which he will perform thousands of shots. But in his photos there are not only the unemployed. the hungry peasants or widows without a future: the greatness of Lange is also in including new inconveniencesperhaps projecting beyond the great depression. Where the powerful manufacturing companies launched advertising campaigns to glorify the free market. Lange noticed the many blacks in a row for bread.

He wanted to dorothea lange, woman who photographed document the racial segregation that hit the Japanese-American after Pearl Harbor. In short, he nourished an unconventional and critical look towards a country that still reckoned today with those demons. And it is interesting to observe that in that same period it was women. through photography, who carved out an important space in the social story: Berenice Abbott in his shots showed the impetuous urbanization of New York; In 1936 the Life magazine was born and the cover of the first issue was signed by Margaret Bourke-White, another narrator of the evolution city. Photography. an emerging art form, was a perfect riverbed for female talent, which perhaps other more consolidated aesthetic forms, such as painting or cinema, tended to crush. Above everything. a belief, expressed by Lange herself in a letter: “I believe that humanity needs what is purely aesthetic as much as what is purely material”.
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