Daring to Look
Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field
Daring to Look presents never-before-published photos and captions from Dorothea Lange’s fieldwork in California, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina during 1939. Lange’s images of squatter camps, benighted farmers, and stark landscapes are stunning, and her captions—which range from simple explanations of settings to historical notes and biographical sketches—add unexpected depth, bringing her subjects and their struggles unforgettably to life, often in their own words.
When Lange was dismissed from the Farm Security Administration at the end of 1939, these photos and field notes were consigned to archives, where they languished, rarely seen. With Daring to Look, Anne Whiston Spirn not only returns them to the public eye, but sets them in the context of Lange’s pioneering life, work, and struggle for critical recognition—firmly placing Lange in her rightful position at the forefront of American photography.
“[A] thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange’s career. . . . Spirn, a photographer herself, traces Lange’s path, visiting her locations and subjects in a fascinating series of ‘then and now’ shots.”—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
Foundation for Landscape Studies: John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize (Landscape)
Won
Association of American Publishers: PROSE Book Award
Honorable Mention
Art & Art History category
“As a lifelong friend of Dorothea Lange, I was absolutely astounded and thoroughly pleased with Daring to Look. Anne Whiston Spirn has hit the nail on the head: she knows the secret of understanding good photography--and of understanding Dorothea Lange's life as well. An astonishing book.”
“In the fascinating Daring to Look, a product of dogged archival reconstruction and shrewd readings of individual photographs, Anne Whiston Spirn presents a case study of Lange’s artistic agility. . . . Spirn demonstrates how vigorously the joint effort of word and image rebuts the standard deprecations of Lange’s work.”
Prologue “A Discoverer, a Real Social Observer”
Dorothea Lange
One Dorothea Lange and the Art of Discovery
Anne Whiston Spirn
Two Photographs and Reports from the Field, 1939
Dorothea Lange
Editor’s Note
California (January to May)
The Highway
The Farm Factory
North Carolina (July)
The Farmers, Black and White
Pacific Northwest (August-October)
The Migrant Life
The Government and the Farmers
The Cutover Land
The Irrigated Desert
Three Then and Now
Anne Whiston Spirn
Appendix A Chronology of Dorothea Lange’s Life
Appendix B Description of New Deal Organizations and Programs
Appendix C Documents Submitted by Lange with General Captions
Appendix D Key to Negatives and General Captions
Appendix E Additional General Captions from 1939
Notes
Essay on Sources
List of Illustrations
Index
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