Dorothea Lange: 1895, New Jersey
Dorothea Lange is very different to the other portrait photographers that I have researched and used to help define the type of image that I am looking to achieve.Her images are not of famous people, but of the poor migrant workers of the great American depression, or the evacuation of the Japanese Americans during world war II.
Dorothea's work focused on images of the poor, needy, surpressed.
Dorothea has been described as being able to pull beauty out of desolation. She described a good photograph as not one that you saw with your eye - but your brain and your emotions.
Ms Gordon, the Author of 'Dorothea Lange - A Life Beyond Limits' described Dorothea as a portrait photographer who had an amazing ability to connect with people and draw them out. A recuring theme through out successful portraiture.
Dorothea's explains how she captured the famous portrait: "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."References:
The Contact Sheet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange
You Tube
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
Hi
ReplyDeleteAnother well written piece of valuable research here, take time to analyze these images carefully as yours and how you post produce them should begin to show signs of influence from your research, your portraits can be black and white and cropped in a similar way.etc..
Steve