Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer best known for her images of rural and displaced Americans during the Great Depression, made while working for the federal Farm Security Administration. Her 1936 photograph Migrant Mother, depicting a destitute pea-picker and her children in a California labor camp, became one of the most widely reproduced images of the Depression era and an enduring symbol of poverty and resilience. Lange later photographed the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, images that were suppressed by the government for decades before being published, and her body of work established documentary photography as a powerful tool for social and political witness.