United States. Farm Security Administration.Historical Section.Photographs Search this
New Deal and the Arts Oral History Project Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Place of publication, production, or execution:
New York (State)
Physical Description:
23 Pages, Transcript
General Note:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 51 min.
Access Note / Rights:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Summary:
An interview of Dorothea Lange conducted 1964 May 22, by Richard Doud, for the Archives of American Art.
Lange speaks of her decision of photography as a career; working in commercial photography; the development of her individual style; the organization of the Farm Security Administration and her association with it; camaraderie among the FSA staff; Roy Stryker's influence and guidance and political abilities; the subjects of photographs and their reactions to being photographed; the people she encountered and her feelings about them, including migratory workers and Dust Bowl farmers; opinions of her colleagues; what made the FSA a success; trends in the field of photography and photojournalism and its future.
She recalls Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon and Paul Vanderbilt.
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Dorothea Lange, 1964 May 22. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Funding:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Biography Note:
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was a photographer in California. Lange worked on FSA photograph project during the Depression.
Language Note:
English .
Provenance:
This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Location Note:
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001