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Dorothea Lange was one of American’s leading documentary photographers, who created some of the most recognisable portraits of the 20th century. As a visual activist, she used photography to bring into focus the lives of people who were often assigned to the margins of society.

Born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in New Jersey in 1895, Lange contracted polio when she was seven years old. Though she recovered, Lange was left with a limp in her right leg. The artist later reflected on how formative this was, sharing that it ‘guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me.’

Lange moved to San Francisco in 1918 and opened her own portrait studio shortly afterwards, where she photographed members of high society. Following the 1929 stock market crash, there was less demand for studio portraits and Lange decided to reconsider her photographic practice. The artist noted that ‘surrounded by evidence of the Depression’ she decided to take her camera to the streets of San Francisco. Her early works, such as White Angel Bread Line (1933), depicted the human toll of the economic collapse.

Alongside economist Paul Taylor, Lange formed a photographer-writer duo to document the experiences of those in vulnerable and dangerous situations. The pair married in 1935 and went on to travel the United States after Lange started working for the Farm Security Administration. During this time, Lange produced a body of work that brought the plight of migratory farm workers and Dust Bowl refugees to the national consciousness. When on a trip to a migratory pea picker’s camp in California in 1936, Lange took a photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her children titled Migrant Mother — this has endured as one of the most well-known images in the history of documentary photography.

Lange received the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded to a female photographer in 1941. The following year, she was hired by the War Relocation Authority to document the internment of Japanese American citizens following the attack on Pearl Harbour. The Japanese American community were forced from their homes and businesses and held in ‘relocation centres’, also called incarceration camps. Lange strongly opposed this government policy, and her critical portraits were suppressed during the war and only saw public recognition decades later.

Lange continued to work prolifically after the war and went on to be one of the founders of the influential magazine Aperture. After she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1965, Lange dived into preparations for a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which was held posthumously in 1966. The artist's commitment to social justice and portraying her subjects in a dignified and empathetic way was a consistent throughout her career. She encouraged other photographers to reconnect with the world, once noting, ‘Bad as it is, the world is potentially full of good photographs. But to be good, photographs have to be full of the world.’