Women's (Disability) History Month: Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was a photographer and photojournalist best known for her portraits of migrant workers during the Great Depression, such as her legendary Migrant Mother series.

While Lange’s work is famous, not much is known about her personal life. She had a difficult childhood. She contracted polio when she was seven, leaving her with an obvious limp. The neighborhood children shunned her and even her mother acted embarrassed by her “crippled” child. Lange’s father left the family when she was 12 years old.

As a teenager, Lange discovered photography and later made it her career:

The pain of her childhood, however, gave her a fuller sense of what suffering meant, and later on, when the government hired her to document the effects of the depression, it deepened her compassion for the destitution and despair that she saw all around her.

Lange embraced her disability, saying:

It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, humiliated me, all those things at once. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.

Lange spent her career photographing others who had been marginalized by society: migrant workers in the Great Depression, sharecroppers in the deep South, and Japanese-Americans being evacuated to internment camps in World War II.

Learn more about Dorothea Lange:

• My Hero Project: Dorothea Lange
• Famous Artists with Disabilities: Dorothea Lange
• Dorothea Lange: Photographs from the FSA and OWI
• Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection

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