About this item
An expansive look at portraiture, identity, and inequality as seen in Dorothea Lange's iconic photographs Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) aimed to make pictures that were, in her words, "important and useful." Her decades-long investigation of how photography could articulate people's core values and sense of self helped to expand our current understanding of portraiture and the meaning of documentary practice. Lange's sensitive portraits showing the common humanity of often marginalized people were pivotal to public understanding of vast social problems in the twentieth century. Compassion guided Lange's early portraits of Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as her depictions of striking workers, migrant farmers, rural African Americans, Japanese Americans in internment camps, and the people she met while traveling in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
About the Author
Philip Brookman is Conulting Curator in the department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His most recent book is Redlands, a cinematic novel that weaves together an intimate sequence of photographs and a novella set in California, Mexico, and New York City during the unsettled decades of the 1960, 1970s, and 1980s. Brookman uses fiction and images from his own photographic diaries to create a first-person account of Kip, an artist who wanders back and forth between farmworkers and poets - between California and New York - seeking to question the meaning of his mother's death.Brookman recently organized a retrospective exhibition and book about British/American photographer Eadweard Muybridge for the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He has organized and collaborated on major exhibitions for other museums including the Tate Modern, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He was previously Senior Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran, and has held curatorial positions at Washington Project for the Arts, El Centro Cultural de la Raza, San Diego, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and editor. He graduated with degrees 20th Century Art History and Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz.Brookman's exhibitions and books include Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes, Leo Rubinfien: Wounded Cities, Modernism: Designing a New World, Sally Mann: What Remains, Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, and Robert Frank: London/Wales for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Robert Frank: Storylines for the Tate Modern and Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. He was also co-curator of the exhibitions and co-editor of the books Robert Frank: Moving Out for the National Gallery of Art, Washington and Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Some of Brookman's other recent projects for the Corcoran include the exhibitions, books, and web sites Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth, Media/Metaphor: The 46th Biennial Exhibition, and Half Past Autumn: The Art of Gordon Parks. Brookman has since 1994 produced a number of other traveling exhibitions and books for the Corcoran, including Raised by Wolves: Photographs and Documents by Jim Goldberg, Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry, The Way Home: Ending Homelessness in America, and Arnold Newman: Breaking Ground
