Unshuttered Lens

Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, And Government Work, 1935-1945

Abstract

In November 1940, on Arizona State Highway 87, south of Chandler, in Maricopa County, Dorothea Lange took a photograph of a mother and four small children. Caught in the powerful forces of the Great Depression, this migrant family's plight was used to drive government relief policy. Twenty months later, at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California, Lange photographed another family: a Japanese American family whose migration was intentional, forced by government order.