DOROTHEA LANGE

“One of the leading documentary photographers of the twentieth century” comes to life in Weatherford’s latest historical work.

Weatherford dedicates the volume to “all who dare to see,” and that is exactly what Dorothea Lange did: she dared to see and documented what she saw—hunger, poverty, soup kitchens, breadlines, internment camps, and bloody strikes. Weatherford never talks down to her audience as she describes how Lange tackled these subjects, using figurative language and rich vocabulary to tell her story: “Dorothea donned a cloak of invisibility to pass the vagabonds in New York’s Bowery neighborhood.” She concludes the volume with a full treatment of how Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother photograph came to be. Green’s debut as a picture-book illustrator is brilliant. The cover perfectly captures Lange perched on a car, camera ready, surrounded by the gray landscape of the Dust Bowl. Green varies her palette, from bright scenes with Matisse-like images and colors to angular gray cityscapes to landscapes and mountain vistas done in lovely earth tones. Wisely, she doesn’t try to imitate Lange’s photographs too closely, simply painting them in black and white and making the images of people simple and child-friendly. A two-page “About Dorothea Lange” section concludes the volume with additional information.

A fine introduction to an important American artist.