When telling about her youth, Dorothea Lange commented wistfully, “Nobody knew who I was, what the color of my existence was, but there I was.” Her comment referred directly to her years in school. However, it also reflects deeper feelings of being “cast aside,” an unintended consequence of her family’s circumstances. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895, Dorothea was the first child of Joan and Henry Nutzhorn, were children of German immigrants who made their home in the Hoboken shipping port situated across the Hudson River from New York City. Her father ran a thriving law practice in Hoboken while her mother, a former librarian, raised Dorothea and her younger brother,

At age twelve, Dorothea suffered a second significant misfortune. Her father, charged with embezzling, or cheating his clients of money, left town and abandoned his family, never to be heard from again. Hurt and ashamed, Dorothea never spoke of her father again. The disjointed family returned to Hoboken to live with Grandma Sophie, and Dorothea's mother went back to work as a librarian. She enrolled Dorothea in a school that was dominated by Jews, as was the neighborhood. Dorothea had never been to the Lower East Side before, and the crowded noisy streets, sweatshops, and miserable living and working conditions had a profound impact on her. It opened her eyes to the tragic reality of life for many Americans.

The publication of this first article caused an immediate commotion. Lange was unimpressed by her newly won fame but hoped to use it to influence the government and win public support for Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies aimed at easing the depression. Together with Taylor, Lange continued to photograph victims of the economic crisis and to compile reports for state and federal relief agencies. The reports, which included dozens of Lange's photographs, were sent everywhere, from magazine offices to the White House. Greatly impressing others with their work, Lange and Taylor were hired first by the State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA) and then by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to produce more reports and suggest remedies to the situation. For the next six years, the two canvassed California and the Southwest documenting the depression.

In her final years, Dorothea Lange found her focus was shifting. Earlier she had photographed people in relation to harsh, powerful events like the Great Depression and World War II, now she was trying to get at something else. She wanted to show people in relation to people capturing their meaning to one another and to themselves. She caught the love between mother and daughter, father and child, and the notions of happiness as she began this new move. With her illness of cancer weakening her ability, and her rapid loss of weight, her long hours of work with no sleep became impossible. In and out of the hospital she began to correlate a display of her own. With time sloping away she still continued to work as had as she had always done.On October 11, 1965, the death of an angel arrived, and her spirit and soul were lifted for us to remember through her photographs.

When Lange was told that she had terminal cancer in 1964, she faced her impending death with courage and worked as hard to finish various projects, including a retrospective exhibit of her photographs for the museum of Modern Art in New York and The American Country Woman. The American Country Woman, a photographic essay, features fifteen women and their homes, communities, or environments. "These are women of the American soil," wrote Lange in the text that accompanies her photos. "They are a hardy stock. They are of the roots of our country. They inhabit our plains, our prairies, our deserts, our mountains, our valleys, and our country town. They are not our well-advertised women of beauty and fashion, nor are they a part of the well-advertised American style of living... They are of themselves a very great American style. They live with courage and purpose, a part of our tradition."

Some topics in this essay:
Dorothea Lange, San Francisco, War II, Jersey Shortly, Jersey York, Pea-Pickers Camp, Country Woman, Taylor Lange, Exclusively Lange, Grandma Sophie--Grossmutter--speaking, san francisco, dorothea lange, emergency relief, relief administration, war ii, documentary photographer, world war ii, emergency relief administration, world war, lange's photographs, photo finishing shop, lange continued, american country woman, american country, religious-like experience seeing,