"In this thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange's career, Spirn focuses on the photographer's largely unpublished 1939 portfolio and champions it as a mix of the visual and the verbal. Lange's stark photographs and accompanying field reports testify to her desire to show real Depression-era Americans-displaced and downtrodden, but carrying on nevertheless-as honestly as possible; they are published as a whole in the second section of Spirn's book....Spirn, a photographer herself, traces Lange's path, visiting her locations and subjects in a fascinating series of ''then and now'' shots, an homage to Lange, who Spirn compellingly argues deserves to take her place as ''one of the most important American artists of the Twentieth Century.''
- Publishers Weekly

"Dorothea Lange is one of America's greatest documentary photographers. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field is a very important book. It provides a fascinating insight into her FSA photographs and writings during that time. Ms. Lange's photographs, especially the work she did for the FSA were a great inspiration for so many photographers, including myself."
- Mary Ellen Mark, photographer

The Book




If Lange’s essays of pictures and words are so significant, why are so few of her 1939 photographs well known and why were only four of her seventy-five general captions from that year published before now?

And why is Lange typecast as a photographer of people in trouble, when almost half of her 3,000 photographs from 1939 are of landscapes and buildings, with no people at all? The answers pose even larger mysteries about Lange’s work and identity.

This book is a story of discovery and recovery of what had been lost or overlooked or misinterpreted, a process of retrieving and recapturing Lange, the person and the artist.

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