FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Spirn compellingly argues that Lange deserves to take her place as ‘one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century.’”
Publishers Weekly

“Dorothea Lange has long been regarded as one of the most brilliant photographic witnesses we have ever had to the peoples and landscapes of America, but until now no one has fully appreciated the richness with which she wove images together with words to convey her insights about this nation. We are lucky indeed that Anne Whiston Spirn, herself a gifted photographer and writer, has now recovered Lange’s field notes and woven them into a rich tapestry of texts and images to help us reflect anew on Lange’s extraordinary body of work.”
William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis

DARING TO LOOK
Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field

Anne Whiston Spirn

Despite the ubiquity of Dorothea Lange’s photographs, a surprisingly large number of them have languished in archives, more or less unseen, for decades. With Daring to Look, Anne Whiston Spirn brings nearly 200 of those photos to light, revealing new facets of Lange’s celebrated achievement.

Daring to Look is far more than just a book of photos, however. Spirn presents the images—taken in 1939 in California, North Carolina, and the Pacific Northwest—alongside Lange’s own field notes and captions, which the photographer considered to be an essential component of her attempt to document the hardscrabble lives of her subjects. Spirn joins that work to an insightful account of Lange’s life, as well as a fascinating look at the current state of many of the locations Lange shot. Spirn’s own photographs of those towns and farms reflect the changes—and the surprising continuity—over decades, carrying Lange’s documentary project into a new century.

Daring to Look brings to life a crucial moment in American history—and illuminates a missing period in the life of one of America’s greatest artists.

Anne Whiston Spirn is professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A photographer herself, she is the author of The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design and The Language of Landscape.

 

Anne Whiston Spirn is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Levi Stahl at (773) 702-0289 or lstahl@press.uchicago.edu