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13

DOROTHEA LANGE (American, 1895-1965) WHITE ANGEL BREAD LINE, SAN FRANCISCO titled and signed

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DOROTHEA LANGE (American, 1895-1965) WHITE ANGEL BREAD LINE, SAN FRANCISCO titled and signed
DOROTHEA LANGE (American, 1895-1965) WHITE ANGEL BREAD LINE, SAN FRANCISCO titled and signed "White Angel Bread Line, Dorothea Lange" in blue pen on verso of mount numerical notations in blue pen on verso of mount gelatin silver print mounted on board 12 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. (32.4 x 26 cm) mount: 13 1/2 x 11 in. (34.3 x 27.9 cm) 1933 printed circa 1940s mounted circa 1950s PROVENANCE Private Collection, CALIFORNIA LITERATURE Ansel Adams, MAKING A PHOTOGRAPH, LONDON, 1935, rev. ed., 1939, p. 99, pl. XXX (illustrated) THE FAMILY OF MAN, New York, 1955, p. 151 (illustrated) George P. Elliot, DOROTHEA LANGE, New York, 1966, p. 20 (illustrated) Robert Doty, ed., PHOTOGRAPHY IN AMERICA, New York, 1974, p. 144 (illustrated) Robert Coles, DOROTHEA LANGE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF A LIFETIME, New York, 1982, p. 45 (illustrated) SAMMLUNG GRUBER: PHOTOGRAPHIE DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS, Cologne, Museum Ludwig, 1984, p. 45, cat. no. 295 (illustrated) Marianne Fulton, EYES OF TIME: PHOTOJOURNALISM IN AMERICA, Boston, 1988, p. 133, fig. 164 (illustrated) Therese Thau Heyman, DOROTHEA LANGE: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, San Francisco, 1994, pl. 1 (illustrated) Elizabeth Partridge, ed., DOROTHEA LANGE: A VISUAL LIFE, Valley Ford, California, 1994, no. 6.13 (illustrated) Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz, BYSTANDER: A HISTORY OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY, Boston, 1994, p. 254, fig. 13.1 (illustrated) Keith F. Davis, THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF DOROTHEA LANGE, Kansas City, 1995, front cover and p. 21 (illustrated alongside variant) 20TH CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY: MUSEUM LUDWIG COLOGNE, Cologne, 1996, p. 373 (illustrated) Elizabeth Partridge, RESTLESS SPIRIT: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DOROTHEA LANGE, New York, 1998, p. 41 (illustrated) Reinhold Misselbeck, ed., AUGENBLICK UND ENDLICHKEIT: DAS VON DER PHOTOGRAPHIE GEPRÄGTE JAHRHUNDERT: WERKE AUS DER SAMMLUNG GRUBER, Cologne, 1999, p. 72, pl. 1 (illustrated) Keith F. Davis, AN AMERICAN CENTURY OF PHOTOGRAPHY FROM DRY-PLATE TO DIGITAL: THE HALLMARK PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, Kansas CIty, 1999, p. 170, fig. 173 (illustrated) Milton Meltzer, DOROTHEA LANGE: A PHOTOGRAPHER'S LIFE, Syracuse, 2000, p. 117 (illustrated; 2 variants illustrated on p. 116) Pierre Borhan, DOROTHEA LANGE: THE HEART AND MIND OF A PHOTOGRAPHER, New York, 2002, p. 71 (illustrated; p. 70 variant illustrated) When the present work was created in 1933, Dorothea Lange had reached the most significant turning point of her career. Throughout the 1920s, Lange had operated a small but successful portrait studio in downtown San Francisco that catered to an exclusive clientele. As the Great Depression worsened in the early 1930s, Lange could hardly ignore the crowds of homeless and unemployed workers that she observed from her studio window. "The discrepancy between what I was working on in the printing frames and what was going on in the street was more than I could assimilate," she recalled. "I knew that if my interests in people were valid, I would not be doing only what was in those printing frames" (Quoted in Mark Durden, DOROTHEA LANGE, New York: Phaidon, 2001, p. 16). In the winter of 1933, Lange's crisis of conscience led her to take her camera into the streets. Her first documentary photographs chronicled the White Angel Bread Line, a soup kitchen that had recently been established in her neighborhood. Arguably the strongest image from this series, the present work features a throng of men awaiting their daily handouts. Perhaps reflecting her background as a portrait photographer, Lange places subtle emphasis on an older man with his back to the crowd. Leaning against the wooden rails, he solemnly cradles an empty tin cup in his arms. Despite this focus on a single figure, the present work is hardly a traditional portrait. Rather, Lange transforms an anonymous individual into a powerful emblem for an entire era.
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