Only to the end of her life kitschy except yourself as an artist. Jihadist very successful businesses and francisco. Then when she began documentary photography which is not a word that existed at the time she did not think of herself as an artist she thought she was a craftswoman practicing her kraft with a very low wage because she had to travel around to the camps. And because of that but as someone whose atoms themselves as an artist. She was born in hoboken and jersey 8095. And had a very ordinary middleclass child couldnt tell at age seven she got polio. That was a new disease at that time and she was loath lucky italy crippled one of her legs. Had it crept into her lungs she would have died. But she was a disabled woman and would say this was the most important formative part of her identity she was very good at hiding it though. She would wear long skirts. Purves mother was very afraid she would not be married because of the deformity her brother drove her to hide it because she wanted her to be a happy woman and have a husband. But she hung around new york city that is where she was in love. She did not go to college or studied photography. And she taught herself. Host how did she make it to the west coast . In 1918 she was 23 she decided she would have an adventure they took a train that the ship the the gulf of mexico and arrived in San Francisco as luck would have it the very day i arrived there were pickpocket and all of their money was taken. They would have gone on but because of that she stayed forever. Very enterprising, i got herself a job right away. Within a couple years she had a thriving photographic studio. Host when did she start with the federal government . Guest a series of wonderful accidents. Her photographic studio was in San Francisco. Said she would take photographs her clientele were wealthy but she would look out the window to see Homeless People living on the streets and begging and soup kitchens. So she decided to start these photographs because her friends like them. They were in the Oakland California gallery and that exhibit was seen by a man who would become her husband , of very straight economist professor at university of california berkeley and he thought they were sensational. He hired her for a program for the stated california to help the agricultural migrants. Then he took her photographs to washington d. C. To the department of agriculture where they had started a small photographic project and they took one look at those and hired her on the spot. He thought that she had to work. In 1936 she began to work for the federal government for a project known as farm security. Host how long will she with them . Guest and she was there for intense years the project itself with five years the Republican People were hostile but the program was killed the 1941 but during those years she worked like a trooper. She may have been disabled but she was a very strong woman. Traveling through the major agricultural valleys of california, 120 degrees in the shade, a sleeping in cheap motels on her very meager per diem. And she was happier than ever. She liked it so much more. Per studio portrait photography did not help her to grow as a photographer. She was very good at it. In fact, if you look at the famous painting of her mother and it is all through her documentary work she was always a portrait photographer but she does something very unusual, she has skills she would photograph people that were flattering to enhance their identities of their respect and dignity. And it was shocking and though one famous photograph mirrors that because you can see a worried and drawn woman who actually had great beauty. With her two children leaning on her shoulders and the baby in her arms but she has though weight of the world on her how she will feed these kids. Host what did she do after 1941 . Guest actually she photographed the First Reading of the United Nations in issue was very optimistic and hopeful what they could do. She actually photographed something she was angry about when the u. S. Government tried to imprison the japanese americans during though war. 120,000 during the war that twothirds were citizens and they were rounded up and shipped off to a camp. Not even an eight conditioner allegation of disloyalties issue would photograph that. But then she started to have her first Health Problems that would ultimately kill her. One that people dont know about so much anymore because polio has been wiped out there is a phenomenon called post polio syndrome that when they would have 40 or 50 they start to get a recurrence of symptoms. Apparently the virus remains in the body and can be activated since she began to develop ulcers and old and ugly she died of cancer she would not have died of today because there were treatments. Host was she political . Guest in a certain way but not in the ordinary american way. She was not a petition signer but had a more spiritual feeling. But she adored franklin roosevelt. That is important because not only felt he cared about poor people but what it meant to her to know that the fellow polio suffered suffer a very powerful a emotional attachment. When she did all this work had no problem jews say to people she would introduce herself that she would photograph the farm workers in sharecroppers to say i worked for president roosevelt. She would even say i make propaganda for president roosevelt. She did not diminish her photography she believed the country needed to do something to help these people who were paid terrible wages. Many were driven out of their homes by the dust bowl with the huge drought in the midwest. Onethird of all photography at that period were photographs were of people of color either mexican americans who were the majority of the farm workers, or African Americans in the deep south. There is a sadness about that, a sadness for her. Nine of these photographs of people of color were published at the time. The head of the program felt the country was not ready for respectful photographs of people of color since they would build Political Support for a bigger cultural programs they felt they could only do that to show white people. Only much later people had come to recognize how important that she had a antiracist perspective they would see with the japanese americans. She just felt in her heart it was a racist idea. Japanese americans cannot be charged you were at war with german americans but they were not locked up. Host when she will bone in her time . Guest she was not. Most of her photography was published as our her name because it belonged to the federal government and it still does. Youd even after and be in america and someone from china or kenya can go to the web site of the library of congress and get access to her photographs and even by a it. It is all public domain. She did do a lot of photography and the 50s and 60s that is private that is that the oakland museum. That is different in she did wonderful stuff the last two decades despite not being up to full strength during that period. Host wish you need as a woman as a photographer . Guest as a studio portrait photographer there were many women doing that out of their homes. You could do that why you took care of your children and would cook your dinner as a documentary photographer or of the road road, absolutely. The only woman in the federal project but also the only parent. When she married paul taylor together they had six children. She was extremely lucky to marry him. The husband from heaven. He adored her and thought she was a genius. Uso secure in his own career he never felt this light is resentment of her. He even traveled with her to work as her assistant while she photographed them. Because part of her technique was she would need to get people to relax to the natural body language. Of studio portrait photographer knows most people will stiffen up when they see a camera. Said she would apply that technique in the field. Paul taylor became fluent in spanish so he could speak with mexicanamerican farmworkers. Host he was also investigated by the fbi . Guest he was. They did not find a single thing. I have a fbi file. Though one thing was a parking ticket. Vitarelli. But they were suspicious of him because of the opposition into the japanese internment but that was because of him she developed a consciousness that it was not the right thing to do. But he was always just a College Professor for a long time at berkeley. So she moved to berkeley with him and their children. Host you also note she was not the best of mothers. Guest she would have been a difficult moment to know and as a biography are biographer i am glad of that id like that i have mixed feelings for her. She got where she got by being assertive. People would call her bossy all the time. Her children would call her dictator docked. Shoes very fussy about her house and immaculate cuts and house keeper in once corrected one of her grandchildren who carried a dish that was handcrafted and said he is told in a way with respect of its shape. She was very difficult. Would she have gotten where she was without that . I am not so sure. It is a difficult role for a woman to be in. Shoes often asserted in a direction to present interesting idea is that fell to her job was to take photographs and nothing else she has long correspondence between her and her federal government cost that heard photographs were the most popular but to tell her what to do and you should your project but he did not think that was her place. But the real agony was about the beating her children and not being called a good mother. But what was so telling about the position of people in that period, one was the stepchild and three were paul taylors. Nobody ever criticize paul taylor for leaving his children. He was gone for huge amounts of time and put children into foster care when the first wife left. That is interesting. I dont want to minimize her children revers reheard to what i interviewed her children to work in their eighties they could still feel the pain having been left by their mother. That was the real thing. Said the job offer was one she could die refused. She would have lived and died a portrait photographer in her studio. Host what do you teach at New York University . Guest i dont teach photography. I teach a lot of Different Things i teach womens history to undergraduates. To the graduate students i teach a course on social movements on what i am interested in. Even though Dorothea Lange was not a social movement person, she worked in a period during the intense social movement during feta with the drives for the unemployed during the great depression. But one sign of her politics happened just before she died she got a letter from an African American photographers who were working the Civilrights Movement. They wanted to establish a collective project of the Civilrights Movement and they wanted her to be their mentor and a sponsor and teacher. She was very honored by that. Because with no political affiliation and she felt so moved that the very downtrodden black people that she had photographed in the thirties were now standing up to fight for there rights. Unfortunately she was already too sick and dying of cancer and could not do much for them she wrote them back but she could not have traveled to the southern states. Host when did she start to get known . Guest she had misdiagnosed ailments for a least four years before she died at first they thought it was a continuation of her ulcers and it may have been because she died of cancer of the esophagus and from what i understand now medically is the acid reflux caused by ulcers had caused the cancer of the esophagus. She suffered through awful miserable treatments there was a surgery that they forced tubes to plead not her esophagus and put stuff in to her digestive tract it was not curable at the time in the 60s and in my lifetime. Said she had a lot of pain in the last years but she was given a one woman photography show at the museum of modern art. She did not live to see the show but she did design it. She did everything herself. Every photograph and how they should be arranged because she wanted them to speak to each other but she died that october and of the show opened in january 1966. And into first knowing herself what she believed in to say i am an artist and to say that was deeply gratifying to her t72 have a favorite photograph . Three or four. It is not the most famous but her greatest skill was her i but her ability to frame an image that would be extraordinary there are a couple that i like. The one side id like show people in a relationship with each other there was one that is done with another project i have not mentioned that she photographed world war ii construction sites that will in the bay area and looking at the woman workers. She shows to people of man and woman that were in a fight but you can almost see the electricity going back and forth between these two people. There is another one like that of the other in the background and a girl who might be 11 years old she is unhappy about something you can see though worried mother. But her ability to see that whether it was a private event i find it is more complicated than the individual photograph portraits. Host were talking with linda gordon professor of history and your University Author of Dorothea Lange. Guest thanks for having me. If it was a delight. Host nyu professor your book creditocracy you dedicate the book to fellow activist. Guest that is in reference to the people i work with in the wake of occupy wall street. And the financial crisis and the way it would manifest for most people was with the debt burden at the level with medical debt and credit card debt. It would be active in the wake of that trying to build the investment. Host water the actions or the goals . Guest one of the reason things we have done is an abolition project you cannot wait for the federal government. It took them almost 60 years to do that and cannot for one reason or another. So this is a smallscale operation where we raise money to go to the secondary market cheaply with pennies on the dollar than abolish it. The last several years weve made 80 million worth of debt most recently as 4 million worth of student that. Host do you target what bank you will buy or just generic anonymous debt . Guest most of it is medical that debt but nobody should go into debt because they are sick. The secondary marketplace is very murky for the unscrupulous people like debt collectors for the most part. So we have to figure on how to operate in that marketplace. Then refined of a chunk of it this summer. Host why is a difficult to find on the secondary market . Guest you have to search through personal bankruptcy