American Masters (1985–…): Season 28, Episode 6 - Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning - full transcript

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Next on "American Masters" --

Dorothea Lange held
the mirror up to America,

in all its heartache and glory.

MAN: It's probably the most
recognized photograph

in American history.

WOMAN: It was published
all over the country,

in newspapers, magazines,
used over and over again.

MAN: Who were these folks
and where did they come from?

WOMAN: People were not
accustomed

to seeing beautifully composed
photographs of people

who were working
in the dirt.



What does it feel like?

What actually is
the human condition?

WOMAN: Dorothea had guts,

and she had curiosity.

She challenges us all
to recognize ourselves

through timeless scenes from
the lives of real Americans.

¶ Scenes of youth
and of beauty ¶

¶ Scenes of hardships
and strife ¶

¶ Scenes of wealth
and of plenty... ¶

MAN: She was the photographer
in the country who was concerned

with larger social ramifications
of images.

¶ But the saddest of all ¶

¶ Is a picture
from life's other side ¶

LANGE: I know people
will be thinking



that they're going to see

documentary photography,
but this cannot be.

I want to extract

the universality,

not the circumstance.

WOMAN: Lange's photographs
speak to us today

not just because they're
about our past,

but also because they speak
to our present.

MAN: She was a completely
independent spirt.

WOMAN: She was busy trying
to change the world.

WOMAN #2: Lange's method to
combat the racism that she saw

was to create
these ennobling portraits.

These are people who seem
like they are timeless

and Dorothea was always
interested in capturing

a sense of timelessness.

LANGE: When I was a child,

I learned to be unseen.

I have an invisible coat

that covers me,
and that has stayed with me

all my working life.

She stood at the crossroads
of American history

and took its picture.

LANGE: The camera's
a powerful instrument

for saying to the world,
"This is the way it is.

Look at it!
Look at it!"

"Dorothea Lange:
Grab a Hunk of Lightning."

Next on "American Masters."

Major funding for

"Dorothea Lange:
Grab a Hunk of Lightning"

provided by the National
Endowment for the Humanities.

Exploring the human endeavor.

And by Cal Humanities.

And by an award

from the National Endowment
for the Arts.

Art works.

"American Masters"
is supported by

the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting.

And...

And by contributions
to your PBS station

from viewers like you.

When I said I am trying
to get lost again,

I really expressed a very
critical point of departure,

that frame of mind that you need

to make fine pictures
of a very wonderful subject.

You cannot do it by not
being lost yourself.

I am trying to get lost again.

When you're working well,

it is, first of all,

a process of getting lost.

So that you live
for maybe two, three hours

as completely as possible
a visual experience.

The cabin became
our special place

to be together and be
with the grandchildren there.

They thought of it as
a place where they were free.

DYANNA TAYLOR:
I remember.

My grandmother and I were
together at our family cabin,

and limping along the beach,
she was photographing.

I had a handful
of shells and stones

and thrust them out toward her,
asking her to look.

She said, "I see them,
but do you see them?"

I said,
"Yes, I see them."

Then she said sternly,

"But do you see them?"

and snapped the photo.

I looked back at my palm,
and from then on

apprehended the world
differently.

Toward the very end
of my grandmother's life,

an unprecedented honor
came to he

an invitation to prepare
a solo exhibition

for the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.

WOMAN: This is really
the pinnacle of achievement.e.

This is not just a matter of
choosing which photographs

of a life's work
of tens of thousands,

but it's also a matter

of figuring out
which photographs

should talk to other
photographs.

WOMAN: Lange's photographs
speak to us today

not just because they're
about our past

but also because they speak
to our present.

LANGE: Your file of negatives
is your biography.

There it is.

I think we have a card
on this.

I think I've seen that
on here.

MAN: I was a part-time student

at the San Francisco
Art Institute.

LANGE: "Next time,
try the train."

This is about

35...

MAN: She looked to me to be

the photographer in the country
who was concerned

with the larger social
implications,

ramifications of images.

We hit it off.

I felt very blessed
to be helping her accomplish

what she wanted
to accomplish.

Uh, this one you said was during
the Depression, when...

During the Depression, yeah.

CONRAD: She was committed
to a deadline that involved her

looking over her entire life
as a photographer.

Probably never anybody
asked me...

CONRAD: We started
by pulling out

boxes
and boxes of negatives.

Some of them got thrown out
on the spot.

It isn't good enough.

This goes in that early Utah.

CONRAD: It was also
an opportunity

to put her affairs in order,

and they were in
considerable disorder.

LANGE: I can't just
exactly say

why I feel, at this point,
with that show coming on,

that I know that I have to look
this stuff over that I've done.

In 1902,
when Dorothea was 7,

she contracted polio.

She was relatively lucky,
but did end up

with a disability.

Afraid that her misshapen
leg and foot

would later make her
unmarriageable,

her mother urged her
to disguise her limp,

saying, "Walk as well
as you can."

Dorothea grew up
in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Her father had left
the family.

Probably some
financial misfortune,

but there could be
another reason.

We know so little because
she never spoke of it.

Little brother Martin,
Dorothea, and their mother

all moved in with her German
immigrant grandmother.

Dorothea remembered being
mesmerized by clothes

fluttering on the line.

She looked out at them
and said,

"These are beautiful."

And her grandmother said
to her,

"To you,
everything is beautiful."

I remember her showing me
one time

what a wonderful thing
was an orange.

Showing me.

Making sure
that I understood it.

STEIN: As a teenager,
she played hookie a lot.

And I really have a sense
that she probably

walked around New York
and saw all sorts of things,

including, perhaps,
exhibitions.

LANGE: I decided,
almost on a certain day,

well, I was going to be
a photographer.

This was before I even
owned a camera.

My grandmother
was very independent.

She often walked the length
of Manhattan

and found herself drawn

to the gallery
of Alfred Stieglitz,

where the work of
photographer Paul Strand

was also shown.

STEIN: She apprenticed
to Arnold Genthe,

who was committed to combining
the practice of photography

with something considered
higher at the time,

and that is fine art.

LANGE: A curious thing,
isn't it,

how a person will pick
a profession out of the blue.

But that's just what
I wanted to be.

WOMAN: She was a very
lovely young woman,

but she knew that she walked
with a limp.

WOMAN: Dorothea's mother

was not encouraging of Dorothea
being a photographer.

So it wasn't long before
Dorothea came up with a plan

to leave town

with her friend "Fronsie."

They decided they were going

to go around the world.

Dorothea had guts
and she had curiosity.

And she just decided
to go.

She and Fronsie
headed west.

They got as far
as San Francisco,

and the first day they
were there,

Fronsie was carrying the money,
and she was pickpocketed.

And they lost
all their money.

So they were stuck

in San Francisco.

Dorothea just went out
and the very next day,

she had a job at Marsh's,
which was like a drugstore

which had a photo-finishing
counter in the back.

STEIN: Where she's taking in
people's film,

perhaps helping
with processing it.

Maybe just working
the counter.

PARTRIDGE: While she was working
at the photo counter,

she met Roi Partridge,
my grandfather,

went home and said to his wife,

Imogen Cunningham,
another photographer...

"By Jove, I met the most
wonderful woman today!

We must have her home
for dinner."

And they did.

She hadn't been here
for three, four weeks.

PARTRIDGE: They just
tucked Dorothea

into their San Francisco
Bohemian life.

MAN: It was a city
that was beautiful

because it had been rebuilt
after the 1906 earthquake.

But it was also a city with
a working-class history

that was there
below the surface.

Along the waterfront,
you had the dives

and the boarding houses
where the Longshoremen lived

and where the bindlestiffs
crashed

in the bars at night.

Still out of money,

Dorothea sensed an opportunity
in this vibrant city.

With the support of her
newfound artist friends,

she convinced a backer

to help her open
a portrait studio.

It was 1919,

and she was 24.

WOMAN: Upstairs, she had
a sitting area

where she would photograph
her clients.

MAN: San Francisco
was a perfect place

for a portrait
photographer.

You had the wealthy there

in need of family portraits
and corporate portraits,

portraits of grandma
and grandpa.

You had wealthy patrons.

PARTRIDGE: Downstairs, she had
a darkroom where she developed

the photographs
she took of them.

When Dorothea was finished
in the darkroom every day,

she would go upstairs
back to the sitting room

and she would fire up
this old Russian samovar

and make a huge pot of tea.

And then the Bohemians
would gather.

Clearly, she already had
that kind of charisma

that we would see later
in her life.

Her studio became something
of an evening salon,

where friends relaxed
on her red velvet sofa,

later dubbed
"the matrimonial bureau"

because of the many proposals
made there.

LANGE: I was a young woman who
had a portrait studio.

I did all the work myself.

It was a successful studio,
but I worked 18 hours,

20 hours, every day.

I really worked.

I was determined that I could
make that go, and I did.

Very old portraits.

Old portrait.

These go way, way back.

Why I kept these,
I don't know.

This goes up
in the early portraits.

CONRAD: She worked,
from the outset,

with groupings
of photographs.

Take a whole bunch
of pictures

and put them on the wall
and look at them and say,

"yes, no, yes, no."

Now, these start
at the other end

because I want
to mix things --

I don't want
so much Egypt.

CONRAD: Working as
a photographer,

I had not participated
in that process before,

and I found it
very interesting.

LANGE: Put it there,
near it.

CONRAD: And she would go through
a quick edit process,

and pictures came down

and put up another bunch
of pictures.

And you step back 15 feet
and you reflect.

By early 1920, Dorothea's
studio was flourishing,

gaining a reputation
for naturalistic portraiture

and as the place

for San Francisco artists
to gather.

WOMAN: One day she was working
in the darkroom

and she heard a very distinct
"tap, tap, tap" overhead.

But by the time she
got upstairs,

whoever's feet that had been,

they were no longer there.

She asked Roi Partridge,

"Who is it who would be making
that "tap, tap, tap"?

And he said, "Oh,

that would be Maynard Dixon --
he wears cowboy boots."

And Dorothea was
intrigued.

The next time she was down
in her darkroom working

and she heard the
"tap, tap, tap" of the boots,

she went upstairs
and met Maynard,

who was dressed in a long cape,
and he carried a cane

and he had his cowboy boots.

She was attracted and
a little bit afraid of him.

He was more than 20 years
her senior.

He was an exquisite painter.

Very established
as an artist.

Dorothea would discover
her muse in Maynard.

Despite their difference
in age,

the attraction was undeniable,

and within a year,
they were married.

She told a reporter,

"My marriage with Mr. Dixon

will not interfere
with my work,

as I shall continue
in my profession."

He opened her eyes to a way of
living by your own values,

living with what is important
to a visual life.

LANGE: He had the finest studio
of all the studios

in Montgomery Street.

And he had it for years
and years.

And I had a studio
at 716.

And there were big ship's
timbers over the door.

WOMAN: She was able
to support herself,

and then sometimes Maynard

when he wasn't bringing in
a check.

She very much wanted to see him
pursue his own art

and not become a slave
to advertising arts.

MAN: Maynard had to make
a living,

and so a lot of his work

was done to please
corporate clients.

But more than anything, I think
he just wanted to be out

in the landscape,
preferably New Mexico,

painting colored cliffs.

WOMAN: Maynard got her out
into the Southwest.

He loved to paint
in the Southwest.

He loved that open sky
and the vista that was available

for him there.

So that gave her
a whole part of the world

she had never seen before.

STEIN: She was exploring,

working outside the studio.

There's a certain kind
of exotic fascination.

These are people who seem
like they are timeless

and Dorothea was always
interested in capturing

a sense of timelessness.

I think she's interested in how
they resist modern culture.

LANGE: The Kiva. K-i-v-a.

How about one of just them?

Steps going up.

Big steps.

Then there's two tin cans
down there.

It's the difference between
a documentary photographer.

Right there,
if you want to define it.

The man with a certain
kind of training

will never remove
those two cans,

and the other man must.

See, Richard,
what I'm talking about?

See the magnificent scale
of those steps?

It really is a thing
of very great proportion.

And these wretched
little cans down here,

well, you accept it.

If muses can be inanimate,

Dorothea's muse
was the camera.

But she was to discover
the muse

in the great loves
of her life --

two radically different men.

My grandfather, Paul Taylor,

born the same year
as Dorothea, in 1895,

later would challenge
and inspire here.

MAN: When one was in
the presence of Paul Taylor,

he was thoughtful.

He was very deliberate
and disciplined.

He saw injustice, and he sought
to correct it

using the tools he had

and was always reaching out
to other people.

This is a powerful individual,
and it wasn't just a resumé,

it was a life.

Moved to enlist in World War I,

my grandfather became
a Marine captain

and was stationed
in France.

To my surprise, I discovered
he brought with him

a small, folding Kodak camera

to document what could not be
described in words.

He brought back images

of the tragic battle
of Belleau Wood,

during which his battalion
suffered heavy losses

and he
was severely gassed.

Overcoming his injuries,
he became a professor

in labor economics at
the University of California,

married and began a family
with his young bride Katharine.

He wasn't to meet the
photographer Dorothea Lange

for another 12 years.

Meanwhile, by 1925, Dorothea
and Maynard's marriage,

the envy of many
San Francisco artists,

became for Dorothea
a contradiction.

Creatively stimulating,

it constricted
by demands of family.

She inherits a child
from that marriage.

The relationship between
Dorothea and the child

is difficult because they're
both competing for Maynard.

My mother's relationship
to Dorothea

was a very tempestuous one.

She was an adolescent.

Dorothea probably left
something to be desired

as the mother of a grumpy,

rebellious teenager.

At the time, people were not
terribly well informed

about how to raise children.

I just don't think she was
very nurturing.

In May of 1925,
Daniel Rhodes Dixon was born,

Dorothea and Maynard's
first child.

Consie now had
a stepbrother.

And two years later, another.

John Eagle Feather.

STEIN: Her son John has
spoken about

the fact that he didn't
experience

a lot of physical affection
from her.

She was a photographer
who wanted to look,

and she was much happier
seeing Maynard

doing the work of nurture.

The photographs are full
of the tenderness

that characterized
her later photographs

of fathers and children.

Maynard was free to continue
living his Bohemian art life.

He would go off on
a painting trip

saying he'd be back
in a few weeks.

But it was often months,
sometimes without word.

Old man makes babies.

Disappears on painting trips,

leaving her
with the two babies

and a rebellious teenager.

Poor Dorothea was an artist
and was trying to do her work,

and here she was stuck

with all these children
to take care of,

with a charming husband

who bounced in and out
every couple of months.

Often as the sole parent, even
when Maynard was at home,

Dorothea became the one
holding the family together

through her portrait
photography.

My grandfather Paul wasn't
the ideal parent either.

Often away from Katharine
and his children,

he was devotedly researching
farm labor

in the Central Valley of
California and New Mexico,

pioneering a new kind of
economics

with a notebook
and a camera.

As the big plantations grew
in California, growers wanted

a cheap labor force
and they started importing it.

By the 1920s, when Paul Taylor

really started his research,

it was overwhelmingly
Mexicans.

WOMAN: He learned how to speak
Spanish

and decided to go down
to Mexico and start

actually studying
Mexican life,

not just Mexican work.

MAN: Intuitively,
without having a word

to define
what he was doing,

Paul Taylor was engaged in
social documentary photography.

He realized how important
the camera was

to the kind of economics
he was doing.

And he used it as a form
of visual note taking

to supplement
his research.

WOMAN: Recording what they were
doing was very hard with words,

and Paul understood that
early on,

that photography was
a much better way

to record activity
and action.

No one else was
doing this.

MAN: The Mexicans come at
a very important time

in California agriculture,

embarking on a massive period
of expansion.

California agriculture
is not wheat and corn,

it's fruit and vegetables.

And most of that
can't be mechanized.

You have to have people

waddling down the furrows,
cutting that lettuce.

It's stoop labor.

It's hand labor.

They were the first
automobile migrants,

because what made their lives
possible was the ability

to shift between jobs
in automobiles

and string together a long
sequence of seasonal work.

And this is where Paul Taylor
first encountered

the conditions of
industrialized agriculture

that would become a focus
of his study

for the rest of his life.

I remember talking to him

about being in Imperial Valley
for the first time

and how overwhelmed he was
to see people

riding out into the fields
to pitch melons all day.

No fresh water.
There would be warm water.

There were no toilets
in the fields.

And then returning to their
barrios on the edge of town,

and sometimes worse.

Little brush shelters
that they had erected.

WOMAN: What Paul saw

was that these young men labored
under intolerable conditions.

Paul was outraged
by this.

MAN: People don't realize
how hardscrabble it was

for everybody
in the Depression.

When we were young, we thought
that Dory and Maynard

really had this income security.

In actual truth,
they didn't.

WOMAN: Dorothea and Maynard

just didn't know how
to get by any longer.

So they packed the kids
and art supplies up

and they took off
for the Southwest.

They go down
to Taos, New Mexico.

Dixon, of course,
is painting.

And the kids are being
taken care of by Lange.

MAN: It was a dirt floor,
an earthen floor.

But they found a way.

A little touch here,
a little touch there.

It was beautiful.

Just beautiful.

My grandmother recalled,

"Paul Strand was
also photographing in Taos

while we were there.

With great purpose, he used to
drive by almost every morning.

It was the first time
I observed

a person in my own trade

who was so intent
on his purposes

and so solitary, but he was
not living a woman's life.

I photographed once in a while,
just a little,

but mostly tried to be
of help to Maynard

and took care
of the children."

WOMAN: So they stuck it out
there for a while

and then did make it back
to San Francisco.

But by that time,

their relationship was beginning
to fall apart,

and they both went and lived
in their own studios

and began what would be
a long process for Dorothea

of boarding
her children out.

They both needed to earn
a living.

They couldn't drag
these small children around

and so they put them
out to board.

It was very hurtful and very
hard on the kids.

During the Depression, it was
the only recourse for people

without any money.

MAN: To put the kids in
somebody else's home

for nine months -- which I guess
it was that long sometimes --

must have hurt Dorothea as much
as it hurt the kids.

When you enter into
the visual world,

detaching yourself
from all the holds on you,

not taking a few photographs

while you're going down
to the co-op,

or...

but it is a mental disengagement

so that you live
for maybe two or three hours

as completely as possible
a visual experience,

where you feel that you have
lost yourself, your identity.

You are only an observer.

Only that.

On Mother's Day,

young son John presented
his mother

a bouquet of daisies.

He later recalled,

"Why didn't she accept
my gift of the daisies?

Instead, she took
a photograph."

1933,

the year
President Franklin Roosevelt

came into office,

was one of the bleakest years
of the Depression.

MAN: Just looking out
the window of her studio,

Lange saw soup lines.

I wonder to what extent
the conditions

propelled her
out of that studio.

There were new things
to photograph,

new ways to use
her camera.

Dorothea challenged herself.

As she recounted,

"The discrepancy between
what I was working on

in my portrait studio

and what was going on
in the street

was more than I could
assimilate.

So I set myself
a big problem.

I would go down there.
I would photograph.

I would come back, develop,
print, mount,

and put the images on the wall,
all in 24 hours,

just to see if I could grab
a hunk of lightning."

LANGE: When you're working well,

all your instinctive powers
are in operation

and you don't know why
you do the things you do.

Sometimes you annihilate
yourself.

That is something one needs

to be able to do.

STEIN: She had developed
some negatives

but had accidentally left
one negative undeveloped

in the film holder.

Sturtevant went into
the darkroom

to develop his own work.

He develops it.

Rushed over to her,
awed by the composition

of her innovative
"White Angel Bread Line."

It changed my outlook.

It changed my way of living.

I made some...

decisions on what I thought

was a good way to be
a photographer.

And I saw certain
possibilities.

WOMAN: Dorothea finds a soup
kitchen that is handing out

paper bags that have cheese
and sandwiches, and she goes in

and there are women.

For social reasons, they
couldn't be on a bread line.

An early photograph Lange took
is "Mended Stockings."

What you see is
the fine, fine detail,

that shows how many times

the woman has mended
her stocking.

STEIN: The sense
of the silk stocking

which can't be replaced,
that must be mended.

All the signs of how people

were having to stitch things
together.

Nothing could be disposed of
in this time,

and for Dorothea, this is
really the intimate look

that tells us about
social experience

in the Great Depression.

Lange was already practiced
in looking at individual faces.

A motto that she had pinned
on her darkroom wall,

the words
of Francis Bacon --

"The contemplation
of things as they are

is in itself a nobler thing than
a whole harvest of invention."

And she took this quote
and thought,

one can see it even more
with bodies.

LANGE: That really should go,
though,

with the unemployment
lineup.

You know, for the checks.
That is part of that picture.

MAN: We don't even have
this in yet.

LANGE: We have to.
It's an important picture.

The creative layout
for the walls

of the Museum of Modern Art
exhibition

was well underway
by December of 1964.

LANGE: I think we can do them
as the best visually.

Then the Murray & Ready

employment office down there,
they needn't all be in,

but they belong together.

Put it that way, then.

And we will see.

This might not be a bad place
for these to go.

CONRAD:
When John Szarkowski came,

there was an element of, "okay,

we've got to dress up
a little bit here, Richard."

And I remember being
a little surprised by this,

but yes, I showed up
with a tie and a jacket

during John Szarkowski's visit.

WOMAN: The curator photographer
at MoMA was John Szarkowski,

and he twice came
to California

and spent long periods of time

working with her about
these choices.

LANGE: I like it very much.

If we could do it
on the basis

of no business of my feelings
about my work.

SZARKOWSKI: No, you have
to give me credit

for being able to look
at these like you do.

I want to have some feeling of
the way this thing

is developed for as you have,
as you people have.

Well, it could be.

Well, you're here now, and we're
going to have hours together.

[Waves lapping, gulls calling]

MAN: If you went
down on the waterfront

in San Francisco in 1934,

you found a labor system
akin to slavery.

Every day, thousands of workers
would shape up for work.

There would be a huge crowd.

A foreman would point --
"You, you..." --

and that's how you got
your job

to heft something
off a freighter.

It was going to explode in
the 1934 Longshoremen strike.

And when it exploded,
Lange was there,

in the middle of all this stuff
that's going on.

ANNOUNCER: 1934.

Today the eyes of America are on
our own labor troubles

like the San Francisco
general strike.

2,500 guardsmen move in.

MAN: They were shooting people

on the waterfront
in San Francisco.

And she wouldn't take me.

And I was ready to help her

carrying a tripod.

It wasn't safe.

Dorothea said, "I wasn't used
to jostling about

in groups of angry men
with a camera,

but it needed to be done."

MAN: She's capturing
the speeches

and the protests.

One of her earliest

and most famous photographs

is of the speaker behind
the microphone

addressing the May Day crowd.

Paul Taylor was doing a story
on the Longshoremen strike.

Ironically, Dorothea Lange
was also there, photographing.

But they never met.

Willard Van Dyke,
a colleague of Dorothea's,

is impressed by her new
documentary work

and creates a show of it
in his gallery.

WOMAN: Willard says
to Paul Taylor,

"You should come down
and look at this exhibit."

Paul sees immediately
that her work is extraordinary

and noticed a photograph

that Lange has taken
of the speaker.

Gets Lange's number,

calls her up and says,
"Can I use your photograph?"

And she says, "Yes,"

and that's the first time
they talked.

One of the remarkable things
about "Survey Graphic"

is that they acknowledge
that Lange took the portrait.

That was rare at the time.

In October of 1934,
my grandfather began a project

with the California State
Emergency Relief Administration

documenting the working
conditions of farm labor.

He had an unorthodox idea.

MAN: The bureaucratic system had
no place for a photographer,

it had no concept of
its benefit or its use.

Taylor found a way
to deceive the system

by hiring Dorothea,

"a photographer,"

masking the word
"photography" --

insert in lieu thereof
"typist."

You know the phrase that they
always put

in the personnel contracts --
"and other duties as assigned"?

Bring your camera.

WOMAN: Paul and Dorothea started
going out in the field together.

And they took very different
talents and skills.

Paul is writing down
what everyone's saying.

WOMAN: He would interview
people.

The questions were respectful,

designed to find the heart
of the experience.

And she got to see that happen
for the first time.

WOMAN: It was a match
made in heaven

because Paul's work needed
this type of visualization.

And what it allowed Paul
to do was to make

a much bigger social impact.

WOMAN: For Dorothea,
the first trip is shocking.

They head down Highway 99
into the Imperial Valley.

She is simply floored by
the level of poverty

that she is witnessing
for the first time

in this state
that she's adopted.

WOMAN: From the time
Dorothea Lange

started working
with Paul Taylor,

her understanding of what she
was photographing expanded

and it became not just

these individuals she was
photographing

but part of a larger view
of American society.

She is seeing with
her photographer's eye.

He's seeing
with his economist's eye.

And they're together
24 hours a day.

There can't help but be
some chemistry and some

exchange that's going on.

WOMAN: Dorothea is still
married to Maynard

and Paul is still married
to Katharine.

MAN: Paul Taylor also has
a family of his own

and a marriage
that's tottering.

WOMAN: At first she saw her role
as a photographer only.

She then developed a series
of photographs with captions.

The captions were written
longhand

and some of them contain quotes
from the people, and others

were descriptions of
the conditions faced by people.

These then became
a government report

like no government report
had ever been.

And they were
remarkably effective.

WOMAN: He understood his writing
could get really dry.

But with her photographs,

he could then put the quotations
of the family members,

and the photograph
made the quote come alive.

After one of their longer
work trips,

they headed back to Berkeley.

They took their time going
over the Tehachapi Pass.

It was undeniable.

They had fallen in love.

Compelled by a vision of what
they could do together,

each had found their muse
and their equal.

MAN: They find something
in one another

that allows them to continue

without diminishing
their passions.

When he saw her images,

he put away all
of his photographic work

and concentrated
on his intellectual life.

Taylor later in life said,

"In Dorothea
I found my photographer."

When Dorothea and Paul
fell in love,

they fell in love deeply,
irrevocably, 150%.

It meant that both of
their marriages had to end,

which was very difficult
for everyone.

MAN: She thought that Maynard
was better --

greater, if you like --

than he ever managed
to achieve.

She was never able to get at
Maynard's real innards.

He withheld them.

When, on that Sunday morning,

I went to their bedroom at about
9:00 in the morning,

there they were,
in bed together, naked.

That was the moment at which
Dorothea chose to tell me

that they were going
to get a divorce.

Everyone was unhappy.

And new lives

for Dorothea and Paul

required dismantling

their old ones.

Both couples divorced.

And, in December of 1935,

in the middle of a work trip,
Dorothea and Paul married

in an Albuquerque,
New Mexico courthouse.

WOMAN: Not only did she have two
small children with Maynard,

but then in her new marriage
she inherited three children,

and she showed that her skills
had in no way improved.

She really was driven,
in a way that we give

tremendous permission
to men for,

but absolutely no permission
to women.

WOMAN: I was 5 years old
when I met Dorothea in 1935.

We all spent the first year of
their marriage in foster homes.

Because, I think especially
Dorothea said, she wanted Paul

and her to have the first year
just to work

and to get used to being
married, I suppose.

So that's what happened.

WOMAN: Dorothea was having

a lot of trouble
with her son Daniel.

She was in agony about
her inability to help him,

redoubled by the fact that
she was so much away.

MAN: Daniel, at that time, was
desperately, desperately mad.

WOMAN: He started acting out
in huge ways,

like taking his mother's camera
and hocking it.

That's a pretty big statement
right there.

DANIEL: Paul heard me
call her an "old sow."

You know, you think of him
as being

kind of deliberate
in his movements.

But this was not
deliberate.

He moved from where he was

to where I was
like a bolt of lightning.

And he grabbed me by
the throat and shoulder

and he threw me
down the stairs.

Nobody called his wife
an old sow.

Oh, boy.

I believe that he was
a romantic man.

He had a deeply romantic passion
for and belief in justice.

You can't have that kind of
belief unless you're romantic.

And he loved her, fiercely.

Despite those complicated
and disturbing early years,

my uncle Daniel, having
found success as a writer,

returned to the family fold,

sometimes as Dorothea's
colleague

and sometimes
her confidant.

LANGE: I need
to speak with you

because you are one of those
who, from time to time,

have understood me,

I'm happy to say,

as well as anybody.

I know that when people
come to this exhibit,

people who've heard of me
before,

they will be thinking that
they're going to see an exhibit

of what's called
documentary photography.

But this cannot be.

I want to extract

the universality
of the situation,

not the circumstance.

DANIEL: How are you gonna get it
done in the time you have left?

I don't trust the time.

I really don't trust it,
and I know how you work.

I think the time has come for
you to make some decisions.

I know.
I well know.

I have to close the doors
and bar the windows,

unhitch the telephone

and face it myself --
I know that.

All right.

MAN: John Szarkowski
drew her out.

He was very helpful
in trying to understand

what she wanted
to accomplish

and in trying
to implement it.

You know, he's
the curator of the show.

WOMAN: He was shaking up
the entire photography world.

And he saw in Dorothea's work
that he could make a statement

about what was possible
with photography.

WOMAN: The idea of a photograph
being in a museum

was a kind of complicated issue.

It took a while for us to get
out of the magazine context

and take the photograph

and just put the photograph
itself on the wall

and examine it.

He recognized

that Lange's photographs didn't
have to have all this context

to get what she was after,

that you could admire her
photographs for themselves.

MAN: Most of what we want
is here, isn't it?

I had no idea exactly
what I wanted.

I was trying to do the best I
could with the materials I had.

I didn't have it close.

MAN: You know, the materials
you don't have aren't important.

They are to me.

Another natural disaster

coincided
with the Depression --

the Dust Bowl.

WOMAN: There were storms
of dust that were so dense

that you could not see your hand
in front of your face.

And farmers reported that
their land, literally,

was blown away.

And then, in many cases, just
packed their cars and left.

It was pointless
to stay.

People were absolutely
ruined by it.

It wasn't one year's bad crop
or even two years' bad crop.

It was year after year
after year.

WOMAN: The migration
tended to go to the west.

They came from Nebraska.

They came from South
and North Dakota.

They came from New Mexico,
they came from Texas.

The migration was composed

of people who became
called "Okies,"

but only a small minority
of them came from Oklahoma.

MAN: In this case, instead
of the covered wagon,

it was the covered jalopy.

As a result of the creation
of the highway system,

they were able to pack up
and move to a place

that seemed to be a better land
where opportunity is awaited,

in California.

LANGE: You could use
the covered wagon

and then either those cars
bogged down in the mud

or that group of cars which
represents more people.

Is that when people really
began arriving?

LANGE: That car that we see
the back of,

that was the first car I saw
that came out of the Dust Bowl.

And that was the day the darn
thing was discovered,

what was happening --
nobody knew it.

And then there was a rush.

Never has stopped,
that influx.

WOMAN: Paul and Dorothea were
the first to witness

and to understand the causes
of this huge migration,

and Paul was unusually creative
in trying to understand it.

At the Yuma, Arizona crossing
into California,

he hired a gas station
attendant.

He said, "I'll pay you
a certain amount of money

if you will simply keep
a tally of how many cars

filled with these people
are coming into California."

And we are talking about several
hundred thousand people

entering California,
hoping to stay there.

This was a major problem
for California to absorb.

Lange and Taylor were in
the middle of this influx,

putting a face
on westward migration.

Who were these folks
and where did they come from?

Well, they were basically
white Americans.

Hardworking family folks.

They weren't coming
to feed off the state.

They were coming to work
and find a home.

They hoped to reestablish
themselves as family farmers.

WOMAN: And, of course, they're
expecting this California dream.

MAN: "People aren't friendly

in California

like they are back home,

but they appreciate

the cheap labor coming out."

"We ain't no paupers,
we don't want no relief.

But what we do want is
a chance

to make an honest living
like what we was raised."

WOMAN: One of the reasons that
people were migrating

was not only the drought

but the mechanization
of farming.

And there's that amazing
photograph

called "Tractored Out."

What you see is
this marooned house

surrounded by this endless sea
of furrows.

There's not a person
living in that house.

It's uninhabitable.

The furrows go right up
to the door.

"On this plantation,
22 tractors

and 13 four-row cultivators

have replaced 130 families.

Tractored out."

WOMAN: Lange's photographs from
the '30s are full of hope,

not just despair.

Everyone trying to find
the American dream.

Some of them finding it
and others,

you just think, boy,
just can't imagine

how they're
going to get there.

She took a series of photographs
of a family

in Yakima, Washington, and when
I first saw the photographs,

I looked at them and I said,
"What's that big object

that's cutting across
on a diagonal?"

You have to go to her caption.

"Note: Still carrying a roll
of kitchen linoleum

three years on the road."

And that roll of linoleum
became memory of home

and dream of home.

WOMAN: During the 1930s,
there is no greater value

in society
than the role of mother.

The conditions that
the women face

make motherhood impossible.

You can't take care
of your children

in even the most basic ways.

Working with Paul Taylor,

Lange had an understanding
of what she was seeing.

She could photograph
a shanty,

and what she was really
photographing

was the house
that wasn't there.

She could photograph
a door frame,

and what she was really
photographing

was the door
that wasn't there.

She could photograph
the stovepipe

and what she was really
photographing was the hearth

that wasn't there.

The reason,
I would argue,

that Lange saw this so clearly
is that she faced

a number of her own struggles

as a mother.

She was a working woman
who was on the road.

She probably felt she should
have done a better job,

but she was busy trying
to change the world.

ANNOUNCER: A New Deal
beginning to roll.

A running river
of social legislation.

Facing a country in trouble,

President Roosevelt
engineered legislation

creating programs collectively
known as the "New Deal."

Among them, social security
and a program

to reduce chronic
rural poverty --

the Resettlement
Administration.

Later it was renamed

the Farm Security
Administration.

The FSA.

Paul Taylor was, of course,
very well connected

with all agricultural matters
in the federal government.

And he took her photographs
to Washington,

showed them to the new head

of this photographic unit,
Roy Stryker,

who hired her on the spot,
because he'd never seen

documentary photography
that had that kind

of emotional power.

Roy Stryker had a visionary
photographic idea --

to introduce America
to Americans.

MAN: Stryker saw in her
an incredible talent.

She was photographing a region

where he didn't have
any other photographers.

And she was a completely
independent spirit.

LANGE: The assignment was,
"See what you can bring home."

See what is really there.

What does it look like?

What does it
feel like?

What actually
is the human condition?

WOMAN: What she produced
was really stunning.

People were not accustomed

to seeing beautifully composed
photographs

of people who were working
in the dirt.

MAN: One of my favorite images

is the six Hardeman County
tenant farmers.

It's hard enough to take a good
portrait of one person.

To get six people

in a row, presenting themselves
to you as powerful people

who are nevertheless
in a state of distress,

that's a real accomplishment.

WOMAN: Lange was also
the only photographer

based on the West Coast.

The time it took for her to send
negatives to Washington

and then wait for them
to come back

so she could actually see
her work

was often months.

The trips were
absolutely grueling.

No air-conditioning, sleeping
in cheap motor courts.

She sometimes hired
Rondal Partridge

as an assistant
out of her own stipend,

since the federal government
wouldn't pay for that.

MAN: Ahh!

You'll love it.
You will love it.

Wait till you see it.

I will never forget

driving at about 19 miles
an hour down a country road,

and she said, "Ron, slower.

Slower.
Ron, drive slower."

Because she was looking
at every camp

and every pot
and every tent,

until she could find where
she could make her way.

Motels then
were called auto courts.

Welcome to Back Breaker's Acres.

I could have stayed here myself.

No insulation.

We holed up in motels that had
cracked linoleum floors

with piss marks
in the corner

because they wouldn't go out
to the bathroom that's outside.

That's the toilet.

We're living on $4 per day
per diem from the government.

We didn't feel deprived.

We just felt that we were
accomplishing something

and providing a service
that everybody needed.

The wonderful word that she said
was "gov'ment."

"We're from the gov'ment,

and we're interested in when
you're going to get work

or how you're going
to get by."

The photograph you have
to use of mine

is the little kid being
photographed at the camp.

And Dory's got a tripod

and the camera's on it and she's
using the Graflex.

But the tripod is the story.

She put up the tripod,
she got the kids there.

Then she takes the camera that's
flexible for getting the moment

and uses it.

I have an invisible coat
that covers me.

When I was a child,

I became acquainted
with the New York Bowery.

A lame little girl

walking down that street,

unprotected, was an ordeal.

And I learned to be unseen
at that age.

And that has stayed with me
all my working life.

Sometimes you just fool
around with the camera

or you sit on the steps
for a while

and enjoy
the afternoon air.

Before I ask questions,
I tell them

who I am,

why I am there,

how many children I have,

how old my children are.

I can then take out a notebook

and write down exactly
what I've been told

without ever feeling
that I am imposing.

MAN: She was very, very
conscious

of the exact words
that people said,

and she would remember them

and suddenly break off
in the middle of shooting

and rush back to the car,
sit in the front seat,

and write down these notes.

The quote was probably
something --

"Well, it's root, hog, or die."

Race back to the car.

"It's root, hog, or die."

What a beautiful statement,
you know?

How clear, how concise it is
to their condition.

You can see in my notebooks,
written at the time, lines,

excitement in getting it down
quickly while it still...

the rhythms of it is generally
what you have to get down.

"If I could get my hands
on an acre of land,

I'd take to digging it
with my fingers."

The tears come to my eyes,
it's so intense.

Write it down.

She responded to her job in
the Farm Security Administration

with a great sense
of responsibility.

She corresponded regularly with
her boss, Roy Stryker,

who would send her requests for
certain types of photographs.

But she also was her own woman,
and she said later,

"You know, we were out
in the field

and sometimes you would find
things of importance

that no one knew about."

Driving north alone, after
photographing for a few weeks,

my grandmother recalled --

"It was raining.
The camera bags were packed.

And I had on the seat beside me
the rolls of exposed film

ready to mail back
to Washington.

A crude sign flashed by
on the side of the road --

'Pea Pickers' Camp.'

I didn't want to stop,
and didn't.

And then rose
an inner argument.

'How about that camp
back there?

Are you going back?'

Without realizing what
I was doing,

I made a u-turn
on the empty highway

and, following instinct,
not reason,

I drove into that wet
and soggy camp,

like a homing pigeon.

The pea crop at Nipomo
had frozen,

and there was no work
for anyone.

I saw and approached the hungry
and desperate mother."

MAN: For many years,
the standard interpretation was

that she made five images.

Then a sixth image
was discovered.

And then a seventh image
was discovered.

She ended up, at the end
of that whole sequence,

with a masterpiece
of photography.

The career of that photograph
is extraordinary.

It was published
in a local paper.

Immediately, donations
of money

poured into
the pea pickers' camp.

Stryker thought, "This is

the greatest photograph
we have produced."

It was published all over
the country

in newspapers, magazines,
used over and over again.

WOMAN: I believe that there was
one Chicano poster,

a Cuban poster,

and certainly the Panthers
as well used it.

It has enough
modernity to it

and speaks to a condition

of modern disintegration
of families as well.

MAN: It's probably the most
recognized photograph

in American history.

LANGE:
I see it printed all over,

prints that I haven't supplied.

It doesn't belong to me anymore.
It belongs to the world.

She, that one picture, belongs
to the public, really.

Florence Thompson was the woman
in the photograph.

In 1958,
Florence and her family

came across the image in
the magazine U.S. Camera.

They resented the notoriety
and liberal use of the photo

for which they had seen
no remuneration.

But neither had Dorothea.

However, late in
Florence's life,

donations
poured in

when a sympathetic
public

learned of
her terminal illness.

MAN: She realized how important
that image was

and what it meant to people

and its importance

to our understanding
of the Great Depression.

Florence Thompson's
headstone reads,

"Migrant Mother:

a legend of the strength
of American motherhood."

My grandfather continued
to fight

for FSA-built worker camps
to alleviate the appalling

living conditions
of migratory laborers.

Repeatedly rejected,
he sent Washington

another series of reports
he and Dorothea created

in efforts to gain funding
for the housing he felt

would improve their lives.

Although his vision
had been far greater,

his persistence saw 15 camps
and 3 mobile camps

built in California.

LANGE: Tom Collins,
camp manager.

Intensely close
to the people.

When he hoisted the
American flag every morning

over that camp,
it was his camp,

and he protected it
from the outside world

and he just was master.

And John Steinbeck somehow
or other encountered him.

And Tom Collins is a big figure
in the book.

Tom is that camp manager
in "The Grapes of Wrath."

WOMAN: One of the most memorable
Depression images

is of two people walking
on the road

with a big billboard
for the railroad,

suggesting the gap

between affluence
and complacency.

Look again.

Look underneath the ad,
and you will see the reality

of what's being experienced
in the Depression.

Maybe the best one

is the one of a gas station
near Salinas.

"Air -- This is your country.

Don't let them take it
away from you."

I think of that every time
I'm at a gas station

and now see that we have to
pay for air.

WOMAN: Every summer,
through 1939,

Paul and Dorothea drove

all the way across the country
to the southeastern states.

She and Taylor were very keen

to discover how our society,

which had developed
a mythology about farming,

was in the process
of radical change.

After slavery was ended,

the South developed a system
called sharecropping,

which means that you give

the owner of the land
a share of the crop.

The overwhelming majority
of the sharecroppers --

who were both
white and black --

were heavily indebted
to a plantation owner.

Lange took a picture of power
and power relationships

and subservience.

WOMAN: A plantation owner

standing in a very kind of
aggressive posture.

You can see that on the left
edge of the picture

is a little bit of Paul Taylor,
who is helping her

by conversing with this guy

so that he's willing
to keep standing there.

But behind him,
sitting on the steps,

are his sharecroppers.

The spatial relations reflect
the power relations

of the society.

"They're fixin' to free
all us fellas.

Free as for what?

Free as like they freed
the mules.

They're aimin' at keepin'
fellas such as us

right down to their knees.

Aimin' at makin' slaves of us.

We got no more chance

than a one-legged man
in a foot race."

WOMAN: It's very important for
them to be photographing

the terrible poverty,

but also the sustaining role
of those communities

and the cultural richness
that she found there.

There's a picture, for instance,

of a very ancient black
graveyard

swept as though it was
an African graveyard.

Those kinds of touches were
important to both of them.

There's this wonderful picture
of the water boy

who is so proud of his job.

He had a role there,
and she saw that.

She saw him
in his stature.

She said that these communities
were rooted in the earth,

like a tree, like something that
was embracing.

LANGE: You want to see
a beautiful negative...

just for the fun of looking
at a beautiful negative?

This is a beautiful negative.

MAN: It sure is.

LANGE: Isn't that lovely
to look at?

If you're a photographer,

what pleasure
a nice negative is.

Oh, my, yes.

Oh, my.

WOMAN: Lange's method
to combat the racism

that she saw
in the South

was to create
these portraits.

She didn't beg people
to smile.

She often conversed
with people,

or, if she was lucky enough
to have Paul with her,

she got him
to converse with people

so people relaxed.

Through conversation,
you could see their animation.

These were
solid citizens.

Dorothea's job for the FSA
was on again, off again,

laid off, and then
rehired by Stryker.

But even when not
collecting a salary,

she continued to add
to her body of work.

In the end, she had
photographed in over 30 states.

Finally, in January of 1940,
Stryker let her go for good.

His FSA budget had been cut

and his photographic unit
was down to two photographers.

It was a tough loss.

She had lost the sense that
what she would make

would appear in a variety
of national contexts.

She never enjoyed that
so fully again.

Later, in a letter written
to Stryker, Dorothea wrote --

"Once an FSA guy,
always an FSA guy.

One doesn't easily
get over it."

Lange and Taylor

tried to condense it all
into "American Exodus,"

this huge population shift
and its consequences.

WOMAN: As the soil erodes,
so does society.

That becomes the book

"American Exodus:

A Record of Human Erosion."

Lange and Taylor

were creating a conscience
that the country needed.

An American conscience.

They rented an apartment

around the corner from
their house in Berkeley,

with no furniture and basically
using the floor as her layout

for the images, and going there
day after day

and shuffling the images
back and forth.

WOMAN: And then coming back
and adding captions.

The photographs themselves
carry the story.

The captions extend

and enrich the story.

"I seen our corn dry up
and blow over the fence

back there in Oklahoma."

"Lots of 'em toughed it through,
until this year."

"What bothers us
travelin' people most

is we can't get no place
to stand still."

WOMAN: One chapter
on the Dust Bowl

is punctuated at the end

by, on one page,
a windmill that's battered,

and on the other,

a woman, her hand to her head

and her elbow jutting out
like the windmill.

And you see these
two photographs together

and you realize that one
is a metaphor for the other.

Lange said about
pairing photographs

that sometimes they're balanced.

Sometimes one is subservient
to the other.

"Sometimes," she said,

"they come together
and they make a loud noise."

"American Exodus" is one
of the most important

photographic books
of the 20th century.

It was very influential.

Life magazine, Look magazine

were just getting going
at the time, and then

"American Exodus" just
turned things upside down.

Oh, the end pages
are extraordinary!

The book itself
is embraced by,

is enclosed by
the words of the people.

Lange and Taylor thought
it was absolutely critical

to reproduce the words

as they wrote them down
on the spot.

MAN: "I come from Texas

and I don't owe
a thin dime back there."

"Brother is picking
75-cent cotton, they starved,"

and I watched her
write that one down.

"Blowed out, eat out,
tractored out."

"Yessir, we're starved,
stalled and straranded."

Whew!

"Starved..."

Oooh!

LANGE: Is it in here?

MAN: It's not in here.

Wait a minute,
it's in the end paper.

There it is.

"An Arkansas family
in California.

Son to father --

'You didn't know the world
was so wide.'

Father to son --
'No, but I knew

what I was going to have
for breakfast."

"One mule, single plow.

Tractors are against
the black man.

Every time you kill a mule,
you kill a black man.

You've heard about
the machine picker?

That's against
the black man, too.

A piece of meat in the house

would like to scare these
children of mine to death.

These things are a-pressin'
on us

in the state of Mississippi.

If you die, you're dead,
that's all."

That's all.

The irony

for my grandparents was

that "American Exodus"
was published

just as World War II broke out
in Europe.

MAN: It didn't sell.

World events eclipsed
"American Exodus."

Manzanar.

A place my grandmother
came to know.

She said, "On the surface,
it looked like a narrow job.

It had a sharp beginning
and a sharp end.

Everything about it
was highly concentrated.

Actually, it wasn't
narrow at all.

The deeper I got into it,

the bigger it became."

In the winter of 1941,

Japan shocked the world
when it bombed Pearl Harbor.

Nationwide, fear surfaced
against the Japanese

and President Roosevelt
took swift action.

LANGE: This is what we did.

How did it happen?

How could we?

Now, I have never had
a comfortable feeling

about that war relocation job.

The difficulties of doing it
were immense.

The billboards that were up
at the time, I photographed.

Savage,
savage billboards.

MAN: The American public needed
to know about this chapter.

The whole relocation
was known, really,

to a small number of people
on the West Coast.

Executive order 9066, signed
by Franklin Roosevelt,

was a very antiseptic-sounding
process to remove

Japanese-American citizens
from their homes

in California,
Washington, and Oregon.

Ripping people off the land
because of what they look like.

My grandparents were enraged
by the racist hysteria

and loss of family friends.

Everything's taken away
from them --

their business,
their livelihood.

You can see they're still proud,
though, the people.

They're very proud
and dignified

during this tragic moment
in their life

where everything's
turned upside down.

There's a picture that
Dorothea Lange shot

of my grandparents
and my dad and my aunt

after they left their homes
to go to the internment camp.

The military didn't know
anything about Dorothea,

essentially.

They were looking for
a photographer,

and here was someone who was
in California.

She'd already worked
for the government

and had a reputation as being

a very hardworking,
responsible photographer.

What the military wanted
from her

was a set of photographs
to illustrate

that they weren't persecuting
or torturing

these people who they
evacuated.

With some misgivings,
Dorothea took the job,

hoping to expose what
the government was doing

to its own citizens.

Christina Clausen, once
Dorothea's portrait subject,

had become
a family friend.

She offered to be
Dorothea's assistant.

I immediately began
working with her,

because it was an intense
pressure to get going.

This internment
was a military action.

It involved rounding up
120,000 people immediately.

This was only happening
in scattered spots

all along the West Coast.

It was very hush-hush.

The papers barely mentioned it.

The public didn't realize
what was going on.

They were ripped
out of their homes

and it was so hard
to photograph that.

It was so hard because
those people were stoic.

They were told that,
"You go like we tell you to.

It's part of fighting
the war."

And they went,
they went quietly.

They were not crying.

They were...

they were being
good citizens.

Dorothea and Christina
spent weeks

witnessing Japanese-Americans
losing everything they knew.

Pets, gardens,

livelihoods.

Their homes.

Every person had a tag
with a number.

The head of the family
might be 10351-A.

MAN: The patriarch would be A,

and then the mother would be B,

and then the children by age,
you know, C, D, E, F,

depending on how many
children there were.

Can you imagine having
a paper tag

with your number on it,
that's who you are now?

Most of the internees

were second generation
Japanese-Americans.

They were American citizens,
and there they are having

their citizenship rights
taken away from them.

You had thousands of young
Japanese-American men

who were fighting
in the military.

One of Dorothea Lange's
early photographs was

of a young soldier who got
a furlough to come home

to help his lone mother
pack up.

MAN: My dad went in the service
and my two uncles were drafted

so they went into the Army,
fighting in Italy and France,

for America.

[Whistle blows]

We had witnessed that evacuation
by train from Woodland.

And it was too far away
from Berkeley to get home,

and we stayed in a hotel
that night.

I went down to the lobby

with Paul's little portable
typewriter

and was typing up some stuff,

and when I went back
to the room...

she was in a paroxysm
of anxiety.

I can remember very well
what she said.

"Oh, I have such
a belly ache."

She was terrorized.

It was the tearing up of their
homes that really got to her.

People were being moved
to permanent camps.

And the first permanent camp
was Manzanar.

In the desert,
pretty far to the east,

and far from Berkeley.

MAN: It's called
"internment camps."

I guess, government-wise,
that's what they call it,

but it's really like
a prison camp

behind barbed-wire fence
with guards.

The buildings at Manzanar
were long barracks

that had from 7 to 12 units
in each one.

No insulation.

In the heat of the summer,
you get temperatures like 120.

But in the cold of the winter,
it is absolutely freezing.

The camps are, of course,
guarded.

And there are military police
all over.

They wouldn't allow her
to photograph the armed guards

or the watchtowers.

She was repeatedly asked
to show her credentials.

MAN: She was often followed
around by a censer.

She photographs
in the nursery sheds

under lighting
filtered through slats,

making it look like
they were behind bars,

an image that one of
the censers found so offensive

that he would not
release it.

WOMAN: This was a woman
who was not willing

to photograph
just what they told her.

When the higher-ups
really took

a serious look at these
photographs, they fired her.

After they fired her,
the U.S. military impounded

the photographs
and would not release them.

They really didn't see the light
of day for many years.

Dorothea hung on
as long as she could

and was relieved
when she was fired.

She wrote in her journal,

"World in agony,
much energy lost.

Some work accomplished.

Paul, my haven, my love,
my anchor,

making lists
and cleaning house.

Feel inferior, and am."

WOMAN: The intensity of
the work with the Japanese

was probably the beginning
of her ulcers.

During the war,
Dorothea and Paul

were living on the bend
of Euclid Avenue

in a beautiful old house,

brown-shingled
and wonderful.

Wonderful oak trees,
which Dorothea loved.

And they had built Dory
a studio in the backyard.

A short descent down
a mossy brick path

from the main house,

the studio was spare,
illuminated by soft north light

from slanting windows.

A haven for Dorothea.

She kept it simple
and uncluttered,

keeping only what
was essential

to the process
of her photography,

including a darkroom.

The oaks embrace
that studio.

She felt kindred
to those trees,

claimed the trees and she
were the same age

and that
they understood her.

LANGE: I have photographs of
the trees that I live with here.

The photographs
are in different moods.

I will perhaps
use three

of the life
of those trees.

Dark and deep
and troubled.

WOMAN: There was no mistaking
that it was Dorothea's house.

She was very particular about
all of her belongings

and about where things went.

So I learned

an enormous amount from her
about how to create a space.

I made a comment about
something,

and she said, "Oh, Margot,
I was wondering

when you were going
to learn to see."

LANGE: Where is the tea,
Margot?

Is it cut up?

MARGOT: It's in the soup.

Oh, it's all ready done?

I was going to give you a hand.

One should have deep thoughts
under all circumstances.

No time for fooling, Margot,
I always said.

[Laughter]

WOMAN: When I was a child,

I was terrified of Dorothea
most of the time.

And I can't remember
my father

ever giving himself
to a belly laugh.

I don't think he ever did
his whole life.

I can, but his were silent.

He would smile and quake.

Whereas Dorothea

was raucous sometimes.

[Laughter]

MAN: The house was
a product of that marriage.

And inside it --
the rooms, the furniture,

the lights coming in
the living room, the silence --

it was magical.

There was a bond between them
that was ironic.

She called him "his honor."

"His honor didn't come home
for supper last night

because he was working late,"
that kind of thing.

And she would express
mock exasperation with him,

which sometimes masked
real exasperation

but turned it into
something good-natured.

Say, "Oh, Paul!
Oh, Paul, listen to that!"

And her impatience with him was
wonderful because he loved it.

It was obvious to me that they
were meant for each other.

Paul Taylor
was absolutely smitten

and never stepped back
an inch.

He was steady as a rock.
He was her rock.

WOMAN: It was a very difficult
decade for Dorothea Lange.

The bleeding ulcers were really
draining her strength.

She sometimes just
was exhausted.

She was in terrible distress
by 1945.

Things got worse
and worse and worse.

And they operated on her
for gallstones

and she didn't have them.

The indomitable spirit
that she had.

As soon as she could
wobble onto her feet,

she would plunge
into work.

My grandmother wrote
in her journal,

"have had
a physical breakdown.

Great difficulties
and troubles.

Maynard is dead now,
but not gone.

The children are on
their various ways.

Paul marches through his life
and shares it with me

in so far as I can
and will.

No longer feel inferior,
though often weak,

vague and ignorant.

Again, another start."

She started photographing
with Pirkle Jones,

a young photographer,

on a project at
the Berryessa Valley

north of San Francisco,
which was going to be flooded

by a dam under construction.

1960.

Strewn across
my grandparents' dining table

were photographs which haunted
my young mind.

The image which grabbed me
and wouldn't let go --

a terrified white horse,
running.

The image which grabbed me
and wouldn't let go --

11 miles long
and 2 1/2 miles wide,

Berryessa Valley
and the town of Monticello

were part
of California legend.

Families who had
lived there for generations,

had raised pears and grapes,
alfalfa and grain

for their cows and horses
in its productive soil

and nearly perfect climate.

"Death of a Valley" "D"

illustrates an aspect
of Lange's work

that people have really
not noticed at all.

An environmentalism.

Lange had the idea,

not of photographing
the building of the dam

as another heroic project,

but looking at what the life
was like in this valley,

the valley that would be flooded
and destroyed by the dam.

There's this wonderful
photograph of a woman

holding out her hand
as if in welcome,

and the text says,

"The valley held generations
in its palm."

They photographed
the last harvest,

people still working
their fields.

They photographed houses being
moved to higher ground.

The cemeteries being unearthed
and graves moved.

And then you turn the page,

and there's a photograph

that just spreads across
the center line.

They sky is darkening
and you get the sense

that things are turning
for the worse.

And then you turn the page
again and then you see

these photographs
that were left.

It shows how disruptive it is
to leave one's home.

A caption in
"Death of a Valley" reads --

"The big oaks were cut down.

Cattle had rested
in their shade

and on old maps and deeds,
they had served as landmarks.

Orderly destruction,

scheduled down
to the last fence post.

Bulldozers took over.

Clearing Monticello
reservoir site.

Specifications number
200C-311.

Buildings shall be removed
completely, or leveled.

The reservoir site

shall be cleared of all trees,
stumps, brush,

and all fences
shall be removed.

All shall be piled to be
burned in such a manner

that the piles will be

as nearly consumed
in one burning as possible."

The valley was empty.

The winter rains came.

Water flowed over the land
like a river

and covered the highway which
ran the length of the valley.

It covered the town site.

All the landmarks disappeared.

No hum of insects,
no smell of tarweed.

The water rising."

That community never
recovered.

A major loss for the state
of California,

for family farms,
for small communities.

All in the name of progress,
of course.

She's never easy,
she's never sentimental.

She's a thinker

as well as a person
responding with her feelings.

LANGE: At this time,

we are creating this environment
almost without scrutiny

in every direction
that you look.

The camera's
a powerful instrument

for saying to the world,
"This is the way it is.

Look at it.
Look at it."

WOMAN: Lange was

right there at the beginning
of the environmental movement,

contributing to its literature.

ri My grandfather had begung
of the envi a battle movement,

he would fight
for the rest of his life,

supporting small family farms

against the illegal allocation
of water

to large agribusiness
interests. interest.

He would go
to these community meetings,

and there were tons
of corporate lawyers there

and he would be the only one

representing the people
of California

who needed that water.

He was an activist,
and yes, she was, too.

However, Dorothea's health
had become precarious

and Paul was spending more time
as her caregiver.

CONRAD: When she accepted
the invitation

to do the Museum
of Modern Art retrospective,

she felt healthy enough
to where she thought

she could
carry this thing off.

She could be feeling
absolutely miserable

and still be in charge.

LANGE: You remember this one?

CONRAD: Dorothea was on a pretty
strict regimen of soft food

and meds every few hours.

And it was Paul
that was the provider,

and he did it in
his very quiet way.

DIXON: The times
she got really sick,

she didn't have strength to go
out on the streets anymore.

But she still always had
a camera around her neck,

and she then began
the assignment

of photographing her own family
and her family life.

And part of that
was this place as well.

[Gulls calling]

My grandparents needed
a respite

and with a grandchild
or two in tow,

would get away to
their one-board-thick cabin

on the coast.

DIXON: It had
an enchanted feeling,

where the world outside
was suspended.

But it wasn't a place where you
came to seek solutions.

And certainly it's true
that when she came here,

she was a much more relaxed,
spontaneous person

than she was over the hills
and far away.

LANGE: Then I began to wonder
what it was

that made us all feel,

the minute we went over
the brow of that hill,

a certain sense

of freedom.

And I kind of looked at that.

I tried to make up my mind
what it was.

This element of
what that special thing is

really took hold of me.

MAN: She did bring
her camera,

but she didn't come here with
a shooting schedule.

They just let the time
and the tides flow.

But time was closing in
on Dorothea

when a final
opportunity arose.

"Now or never," my grandmother
wrote in her journal.

"Decisions are ill-mannered,

intrusive, brash,
inconsiderate.

That exact moment when
the cloud shadows

pass over the mountain peak,
the decision must be made."

LANGE: I said to the doctor,
"Shall I go?"

And he said,
"What's the difference

whether you die here
or there -- let's go!"

In '63, in spite of everything,
I went around the world

with Paul.

WOMAN: Paul Taylor was
a land reform expert

for the United Nations
and foreign aid.

As was typical of Paul,

he always wanted Dorothea
with him.

MAN: She's no longer
the government photographer.

She's a wife accompanying
an economist.

STEIN: What lunacy

that the Ford Foundation
and others didn't say,

"You should work as a couple,
as you worked in the '30s."

She's seen as Taylor's wife,
who has a camera.

[Birds chirping]

"I'm writing from a strange
and large wooden house

with huge porches
surrounded by jungle.

I never thought I'd be
in a place like this.

The gentleman whom I love
so much does his very best

to make everything as right
for me as he can.

My struggles with my innards
continue

and there are
some bad moments.

But Paul and I survive it

and we are happy
in the same room together.

It is not easy for me to work
on Paul's expeditions.

It's only grab-shooting.

Travel is fast.
That suicidal taxi ride.

Paul sat there and laughed,
serene in the fact

that we are insured.

But all I could muster was,
"Mother of God!"

No chance to discover
for myself

what I am in the midst of
and work it through.

I am confronted with doubts

as to what I can grasp
and record on this journey.

Here is a very ordinary woman
in a strange land.

She has a camera around
her neck, poor health,

and is lame.

But the pageant is vast

and I clutch at tiny details,
inadequate."

There is that lifelong
sensitivity to the body

that makes this very different

from your standard
tourist snapshots.

"I'm thin as a rail.

I have to hold up my clothes
with safety pins.

The bedspread is gritty

and I lie in this
agreeable disagreeable room

and look over my negatives.

Why do I photograph?

How much is vanity
or self-justification?

Faced with all these
international negatives,

and behind them all the other
negatives I've made,

order begins to come

out of this life."

MAN: One wonders to what extent
it's a visual journey for her,

that all of this

is her own drive to explore
the human condition.

"Later, while Paul sleeps,
I ask myself,

for what have I lived?

This is the year, in the midst
of my suffering,

I became an artist
in the world.

A small artist,

but for the first time
in all the years,

I can say I'm beginning
to be an artist."

"My energies are short and
limited because of my illness.

But I believe that I can see,

that I can see straight
and true and fast.

This has been
an exercise in vision,

and for this photographer,

it may be closer
to the final performance."

MAN: There were
these categories,

these drawers, where,
over time, photographs landed.

"I like this image.
Where does it belong...?"

She described as making
sentences out of photographs,

and maybe, possibly, if you
could really be good at it,

you'd make a paragraph
out of it.

LANGE: We take the old woman,
whose life is almost finished

and has all that work
behind her.

She goes in...

CONRAD: Sometime in the late
spring, early summer of '64,

she began to have
more and more bouts

of throat constriction
and pain,

and it was determined that she,
in fact, had cancer.

At that point, she'd already
invested a good deal of time

in getting this Museum
of Modern Art show done.

And it was
full steam ahead.

To see me struggle this way
is not so good, is it?

[Telephone rings]

This is very challenging
under my present circumstances.

I have cancer
of the esophagus,

and I'm not
going to be here.

We are trying to make
that show add up

to not a succession
of extra-fine photographs.

I don't care about
the photography,

I only care about
what the camera can do.

So, I work for the exhibition

and contemplate things
as they are.

CONRAD: From the moment that
the cancer was diagnosed,

she knew that there was
a deadline.

That either the show was going
to be completed in that time

or it wasn't
going to happen.

And she pressed herself.

She would just keep on going.

My grandfather wrote
John Szarkowski

at the Museum
of Modern Art --

"Dear John,
amid the ups and downs,

today is on the 'up' side.

Dorothea looks forward
greatly to your coming --

almost literally
'lives for it.'

My estimate still holds --

chance is 50-50
we will get her to New York

for the opening in January."

In late summer of 1965,

John Szarkowski came
for a final time

to work with Dorothea.

MAN: When we got down
to the nitty-gritty of it,

she was one of the most
strong-minded people

I've ever met.

As walls developed,
as themes developed --

pairs of pictures,
groups of photographs

coalesced around each other
and made visual sense.

Her confidence grew.

It was, "Okay, full-bore,
let's go."

As the show took shape, it was
really an interesting trip

to conceive of it as some kind
of integrated visual event.

LANGE: Once you've seen
a pair like this,

you miss it.

It's only really
half a sentence.

"You know what today is?

Today is the first day
of autumn.

Have you felt it?

Today it started.

The summer ended this afternoon
at 2:00, all of the sudden.

The air got still,
a different smell.

A kind of funny,
brooding quiet.

Today it happened.

I was out and I was
just so aware of it.

Can you feel it?

Today is the day."

Dorothea never made it
to the exhibition.

She died three months before.

At her side until the end,
my grandfather told us later,

her last words were,

"Isn't it a miracle that it
comes at the right time?"

After a moment, he added,

"It was the greatest thing
in my personal life

to live 30 years
with a woman like that."

My grandfather lived
another 20 years.

He never stopped fighting for
the rights of migrant workers

and for the fair distribution
of water

to small farmers
in California.

From him I received
the gift of Dorothea's camera

soon after she died,

an enduring expression
of their confidence.

Our family scattered Dorothea's
ashes near the cabin

from the rocks above the sea.

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