Dorothea Lange

Long, long after the death of LIFE and LOOK, we once again live in a world of images.  Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest all cater to that proverbial idea that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Yet perhaps it's because we have too many images, or that they are coming at us to fast, few truly capture the essence of any particular moment or ethos.

However when we look back at the work of famed photographer Dorothea Lange, it’s different.  Her  striking black and white images taken during the depression years and depicting those on the margins of society, are a kind o tabula rosa for understanding a place, a time, a way of life.

Dorothea Lange will soon be the subject of a PBS documentary  on the American Masters series, and Chronicle Books has just released a career spanning collection of her work entitled Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning. It is the companion book to the PBS documentary.  The new volume is written and curated by her goddaughter acclaimed biographer Elizabeth Partridge.

My conversation with Elizabeth Partridge: