"In this thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange's career, Spirn focuses on the photographer's largely unpublished 1939 portfolio and champions it as a mix of the visual and the verbal.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




DARING TO LOOK tells how Lange accomplished this extraordinary work and explores the mysteries of why her 1939 documents were “lost,” why Lange was fired at the end of 1939, and why, even now, Lange’s contributions are ignored or disparaged by many critics.

But DARING TO LOOK is not only a book about Dorothea Lange, 1939, and the Great Depression. Reading Lange’s images and words is to see the roots of our own time and place. Her work speaks eloquently to the present, for the forces she saw and recorded in 1939 are still in play: the shift from the family farm to industrialized agriculture and practices that victimize migrant workers and child labor, to name just a few. Lange’s reports from the field record familiar problems (how to resettle an enormous population following a disaster; the disconnect between government bureaucrats and the conditions on the ground) and portend future conflicts (such as those that now rage over water in the West).

1 2 3 4

« Previous       Next »