Learning to see: A novel on Dorethea Lange, a women who revealed the true America by Elise Hooper 2019 370pages,

 Dorethy Lange a activist with a camera

She lived from 1885 to 1965

Berkley 1964  The test of friendship lies in the ability to withstand bruises and wounds.

 She had a collection of photos of  New Mexico 1935, California 1936, Texas 1938,Arkansas 1938, Arizona 1940.

1918 The story starts in San Francisco , Dorethea Nutzhorn with her friend Fronsie after graduation in NY and earning money were taking a trip across American and then onto Honolulu and beyond. Their purse with the cash was stolen. Penniless  they decided to get jobs there. Fronsie who had worked for Western Union was taken on in the local office and Dorothea a qualified photographer at a portrait studio in Nob Hill. 

Dorethea had  had, had polio so wore pants to hide her weak leg and to get a job and was asked about her limp and said she dropped a suitcase on her toe accidently. She took her mother's maiden name Lange and it was less German. She had professional lithographers in her family.

1920 Aged 24 married Maynard Dixon (a divorcee with a daughter) an artist who painted landscape scenes. Near Kenyanta, Arizona they went into see far off the main road "The Tuba City Indian School" This is a military type school run by the government to force these  kids away from their tribe to "save" from indolence and alcoholism, poverty and tubucolosis. They don't allow them to speak Navajo and teach them English and how to work. Dorothy and Maynard are shocked.
1925. They had a sons Daniel  and then John 1928

The monochromatic palette removed any disssonnce between colors that didn't match.

1925 Alfred Steiglitz's was the leading photographer, his wife was Gergia O Keefe on the East Coast her art and cubism, surrealism and modernism were the demand  not Maynards works of dessert scenary. Paul Strand exhibited photos as the Steiglitz Gallery, Dorothea with help from friends set up a portrait photo studio that attracted high class clients

1929 Start of Depression,

Albert Bender an Irish Jew successful  in insurance in SF in 1930s. Donated a collection of art to the SF Museum of Arts as well as the Irish Art Gallery. Ralph Stackpole leading SF sculpture who was involved in public works during the depression. Coit Tower project to provide employment, artist were paid to paint murals in this.

1931 Diago Raviera was  commissioned to do mural at SF Stock Exchange. His wife Frida Kohla also had a polio leg and  met Dorethea and gave her one of her long dresses.

1932 Lindberg paid out $50000 ransom to get his baby back. FDR replaces Hoover and the New Deal Begins.

So that Dorothea and Maynard could work they fostered out the children. She started taking photos of the soup kitchen lines. She was at the Embarcadero for  the May Day Parade on Bloody Thursday when 2 men were killed.

Maynard got a commission documenting  in art the Boulder Dam construction  that started in 1932 and later called the Hoover Dam he was appalled at the working conditions.

1936 San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge completed, 

1937  Golden Gate Bridge completed this was the world longest suspension bridge at the time. 

Graflex and Rollerflex and Juwel were some of the cameras she used.

Paul Taylor was an economics professor at Berkley and had articles in Survey Graphic and had seen pictures of hers at an exhibit and paid for some to be included in his article. He felt she was an artist and story teller through her pictures, Then through SERA State emergency Relief Administration he hired her as a "typist" as he was told "What do you need a photographer for"

In the Coachella Valley people were paid about 70cents a day to pick lettuce, the cheap restaurant meal she paid 65 cents for. Even 10 year old children were working here.  In the Imperial Valley they paid a kid pumping gas to make a list of the states that the cars passing came from - Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, none from Mexico. Then they learned of the Oklahoma dust storms of the past few years and the banks taking over farms there. At a camp in Sacramento Valley were malnourished kids covered with flies.

Social Security Board gave them an assignment starting in Marysville, then New Mexico. She divorced Maynard and married Paul Taylor.

1937 The SF News published the "Harvest Gypsies" a weekly series by John Steinbeck with her photo's illustrating it. Many politicians objected to these and she lost her job while the pictures belonged to the government. Near Nipomo at a pea picking camp her very iconic picture was taken.  The Steinbeck's articles were published as a book with her photos

In the south she documented Negro sharecroppers and segregation laws.

1939 John Steinbeck published "Grapes of Wrath" When Dorethea published  her photos album "American Exodus"  she asked him to write a forward but he refused. Later when John Ford made the movie of "Grapes of Wrath "he made scenes directly from her photos without acknowledging her.

Her work was no longer attracting attention as the press was filled with news of  Hitler. 

1941 She received the Guggenheim Award .  1941 December Pearl Harbour attack.

1942 With the Japanese Relocation men that arrived  from the Dust Bowl ten years earlier were buying up Japanese farms and barely paying. The War Relocation Authority got her to document this in Taforan , San Bruno, Stockton, Saint Anita, Turlock. The Colonel at Manzanar got the WRA to fire her and  conviscated the photos and   negatives.  Ansel Adam was sent by the War Office to document the industry ports and factories going up north of Oakland for the war effort, he also documented the Japanese Relocation Camps the way the government wanted  them portrayed. Dorothy took pictures of these towns documenting the "Warm Bed" hotels where people rented the same beds at different work shifts. 

1957 She taught at the California School of Fine Arts and also published material documenting Ireland.

The book ends when she is ill and has been invited to give an exhibition at the MoMO Museum in NY. Her impounded pictures at Manzanar  she received back from Washington but warned not to publish. She tells her son Dan who helps her with this project .The reason she neglected her children to do her work, was that  she saw herself  not an artist but an "activist." The exhibition was put on 3 months after her death.