First edition of Words and Pictures by Dorothea Lange (2020)

Exhibition catalogue published on occasion of the exhibition Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from Feburary 9th- May 2nd, 2020. 

Medium format hardback in fine condition. Slight shelf wear to corners and bottom edge of cover boards,  due to soft nature of chopped-board material. Belly-band has sustained some faint shelf wear markings. Cover unaffected. No other markings. Pages clean, binding firm. 

176 pages. 152 duotone, halftone and colour reproductions.

Introductory text by exhibition curator, Sarah Hermanson Meister.

About

Towards the end of her life, Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) remarked that "all photographs-not only those that are so-called 'documentary,' and every photograph really is documentary and belongs in some place, has a place in history-can be fortified by words." Though Lange's career is widely heralded, this connection between words and pictures has received scant attention. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalogue provides a fresh approach to some of her best-known and beloved photographs, highlighting the ways in which these images first circulated in magazines, government reports, books, etc.

An introductory text by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister will be followed by plates organised according to "words" from a variety of sources that expand our understanding of the photographs. The featured photographs will range from Lange's first engagement with documentary photography in San Francisco in the early-mid 1930s, including her iconic White Angel Breadline (1933), to landmark photographs she made for the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) such as Migrant Mother (1936), powerful photographs made during World War II in California's internment camps for Japanese-Americans, major photo-essays published in Life magazine on Mormon communities in Utah (in 1954) and County Clare, Ireland (in 1955), and quietly damning photographs made in the Berryessa Valley in 1956-57, before the region was flooded by the construction of a dam intended to address California's chronic water shortages.