Artist Report Exercise1-4

Artist Report Exercise Example: 1. My last name starts with the letter L so I chose Dorothea Lange. 2.

A. The photographer’s name is Dorothea Lange. She was born in 1895 in New Jersey. Lange studied in New York to be a teacher. Lange studied with Clarence White, a member of the Photo-Secession group at Columbia University. She traveled the world and supported herself by selling her photographs. She settled in San Francisco and worked in a photography studio.

B. Dorothy Lange photographed unemployed men on the streets of San Francisco during the

great depression. Her images of the terrible conditions of the Great Depression were positively recognized by the public and fellow photographers, particularly the f64 group. Then in 1935 she was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to photograph the conditions of the rural poor population. The FSA hoped her images would bring this plight to the public’s attention.

C.

D. This is Lange’s most famous portrait. It is an image of a woman looking sad and tired. She is holding a baby and 2 other children are leaning on each of her shoulders. All four people looked dirty, dishevels, ragged, and poor. At the same time, the woman looked strong, like she is a working person, perhaps a farmer. This image is iconic because it shows the poor living condition of the rural farmers during the Great Depression. Lange met the FSA’s goal.

2. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/dorothea-lange-biography-with-photo-

gallery/3097/ https://www.moma.org/artists/3373 Ang, T. Photography: The Definitive Visual History. DK Publishing. 2014. Print.