The virus in fact left Lange with a slightly weaker right leg, therefore giving her a perpetual limp for the rest of her life. Dorothea Lange continued on to study the art of photography at Columbia University in New York City and actually took a class taught by Clarence White, another famous photographer. After being an apprentice for several studios in New York City, she moved out to San Francisco in 1918 and started her own successful portrait studio. There she met her first husband, famous painter Maynard Dixon and had two sons named Daniel and John. When the effects of the Great Depression began to become palpable in her area and closed her own business, Lange couldn't help but document the sudden flood of newly jobless and homeless people.2 .
This personal project caught the attention of local photographers and led to her being hired as a documentary photographer by the government's Resettlement Association to document the effects of the depression and how people chose to deal with their situation. "Of these photographers, none has been more important than Dorothea Lange. Working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) between 1935 and 1942, Lange pushed aside older, less engaged approaches and directed to farmworkers and other mi- grants a form of humanistic, socially oriented documentary photography." 3 Dorothea Lange went on to be considered one of the pioneers of documentary photography, and Migrant Mother has become a widely known example of how meaningful a simple photograph can be and the emotions that it can depict as well as those it can evoke simply by looking at it. "Her most familiar image, "Migrant Mother, Nipoma, California, 1936," now in the Library of Congress collection, was taken during this assignment. Of her work during this era Lange said: 'The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.