Dorothea Lange – A Life Beyond Limits - Hardcover

Gordon, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393057305 ISBN 13: 9780393057300

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

We all know Dorothea Lange's iconic photos-the "Migrant Mother" holding her child, the gaunt men forlornly waiting in breadlines-but few know the arc of her extraordinary life. In this sweeping account, renowned historian Linda Gordon charts Lange's journey from polio-ridden child to wife and mother, to San Francisco portrait photographer, to chronicler of the Great Depression and World War II. Gordon uses Lange's life to anchor a moving social history of twentieth-century America, re-creating the bohemian world of San Francisco, the Dust Bowl, and the Japanese American internment camps. She explores Lange's growing radicalization as she embraced the democratic power of the camera, and she examines Lange's entire body of work, reproducing more than one hundred images, many of them previously unseen and some of them formerly suppressed. Lange reminds us that beauty can be found in unlikely places, and that to respond to injustice, we must first simply learn how to see it.

About this title

Review:

"Linda Gordon, one of our greatest historians, gives us an engrossing portrait of Dorothea Lange. Every page of this magisterial biography sparkles with insight into Lange's life, passions, photographic techniques and achievements-and into the lives of the dispossessed farmers, unemployed laborers, and incarcerated Japanese-Americans who were her greatest subjects." -- George Chauncey, author of Gay New York "As Dorothea Lange's biographer, Linda Gordon is fortunate that Lange's private life was as complex-exceptional yet archetypal-as the history she documented in her photographs. The resulting book is superb social history rendered through a remarkable artist and personality." -- Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Carry Me Home "An astonishing and deeply moving biography of Dorothea Lange, America's foremost social photographer. No other account can rival this one for its engagement or for its dissection of the passions, injuries, and hopes that impelled Lange to challenge the boundaries of gender, race, and family. Linda Gordon writes about her complex subject with sophistication, frankness, and sensitivity. In the process, Gordon demonstrates yet again that she is among the most gifted and probing historians of our time." -- Gary Gerstle, author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century "[A] masterly biography that illustrates the personal and professional struggles and achievements of a woman who was ahead of her time and who remains overshadowed by her work." -- Elle

About the Author:

Linda Gordon, winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is the author of The Second Coming of the KKK, Dorothea Lange and Impounded, and the coauthor of Feminism Unfinished. She is the Florence Kelley Professor of History at New York University and lives in New York and Madison, Wisconsin.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393057305
• ISBN 13: 9780393057300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 560