Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was a photographer in California. Lange worked on FSA photograph project during the Depression.
Lange speaks of her decision of photography as a career; working in commercial photography; the development of her individual style; the organization of the Farm Security Administration and her association with it; camaraderie among the FSA staff; Roy Stryker's influence and guidance and political abilities; the subjects of photographs and their reactions to being photographed; the people she encountered and her feelings about them, including migratory workers and Dust Bowl farmers; opinions of her colleagues; what made the FSA a success; trends in the field of photography and photojournalism and its future.The FSA built a remarkable collection of more than 80,000 photographs of America during the Depression because they hired great photographers and a great administrator to lead them. Like many governmental agencies, the FSA set up a publicity department to help explain to the public and Congress what its programs were trying to accomplish and the problems it was trying to solve.
She recalls Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon and Paul Vanderbilt.
This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
