BURNED IN OUR MEMORY DOROTHEA LANGE'S ERA-DEFINING IMAGES ON DISPLAY AT THE GETTY.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

DOROTHEA LANGE (1895-1965) didn't have far to go.

Outside her San Francisco photography studio in 1933, the ravages of the Depression were evident - bread lines and unrest. A dock strike raged (sound familiar?), and protesters of all stripes milled restlessly in the streets as America's newly poor waited in lines - often in their Sunday best - hoping for food or a chance to work.

While the images of the poor and displaced were everywhere, it took a handful of photographers like Lange to put the Depression in focus for the nation and for future generations. But the interesting question is how Lange, a woman in her late 30s, took those steps from obscure portrait photographer to documentarian of an era. Her works, including ``Migrant Mother,'' have become icons.

Part of the answer has to do with a trip she took to the Taos, N.M., area in 1931, which has been little chronicled but comes to light in the new exhibition, ``About Life: The Photographs of Dorothea Lang,'' at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Lange had gone there with her husband, painter Maynard Dixon (1875-1946). Dixon had been offered studio space, explains the Getty's Judith Keller, who curated the exhibition. During her time in Taos, Lange had little to do but take care of her husband and her two boys. So when Dixon would visit the nearby pueblo - he was an artist who prided himself on knowing his subjects - Lange began shooting pictures of people as he talked with them. It put the subjects at ease and help earn their trust - a technique she would employ effectively throughout her career.

Southwestern view

Most of Lange's Taos pictures have only been discovered recently, and few have been displayed. But the new exhibit has a number of them, which help show Lange's growth from portraitist to documentarian.

What's surprising about the photos is that most are smaller than a postcard. Lange probably never intended them to be shown, notes Keller, adding, ``I think they were very special to her because they were very different from what she was doing.''

Of these, Keller singles out an image of a woman feeding chickens. ``It's not a subject you would expect from Lange,'' says Keller, ``but, on the other hand, it is the way she has chosen to photograph it that makes it captivating ... the woman is staring right at Lange, and the chickens are perched in a very artistic manner (on a ladder), and there is a very dramatic landscape in the background.''

Fast-foward to San Francisco a year or so later - she and Dixon have separated, and the children are being boarded with another family. The Depression was growing worse, and Lange believed the nation did not understand how devastating it was.

A nation in pain

With the experience of Taos fresh behind her, Lange went out to document ``the proof of the Depression,'' as she later says.

Two of the most striking photos from that period were ``White Angel Bread Line'' (1932), showing a man looking dejected, head bowed, a tin cup before him resting on a railing; the other, ``General Strike/Street Meeting, San Francisco'' (1934), shows a policeman standing in front of a striking crowd.

``Clearly, this fellow was a tall guy,'' notes Keller, ``but she composed it so that it looks like a mass of humanity in the background - all about the same size, all these men out of work. And the symbol of authority is this enormous, very unsympathetic-looking fellow. This kind of thing is what the muralists did over and over again.''

But walls don't move - and strikers do. Clearly, Lange had to make quick decisions on the streets. Later, though, she brought a keen artistic eye - and undoubtedly a sense of social consciousness - to how she cropped the shot.

The pictures proved effective. Paul Taylor, an economist at University of California, Berkeley, saw the photos at a 1934 exhibition and invited Lange to work for him as part the historical division of the federal government's Resettlement Admistration, which was later moved to the Farm Security Administration. The two went out into the field together - he doing the interviewing, she the photographing. They then would send their reports and pictures back to Washington, D.C. (The two later divorced their spouses and married in 1935.)

It was during the FSA period that Lange took her most famous photo, ``Migrant Mother'' (1936). It was actually from a series of photographs, one of which the FSA chose to send to The New York Times. (The Getty has bought a number of these prints from the newspaper.) The way it was printed and cropped (you can see the crop marks on the Getty's print) wasn't necessarily Lange's intention, which is why she and other FSA photographers kept duplicate negatives so they could make their own prints. It was Lange's crop of another photo of the series, of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in a California pea-pickers' camp, that become an icon (the irony being that Thompson, who was born to Cherokee parents on a reservation, was not white, like most people assumed).

Kevin Starr, state librarian and University of Southern California professor of history, sees this period as as a time when Lange's artistry bloomed, although the photographer herself ``denied the role of an artist. It embarrassed me.'' But Starr and Keller believe Dixon had been an influence on her. She had been trained as an artist and brought a lot of ``Dixon's work, his concepts, his methods in her photographs,'' Keller points out. The Depression, as it turned out, provided the subject Lange needed. So in a way, too, Lange didn't have far to go to do the photography we remember her for.

An artist's rule

As for the question of Lange's social agenda affecting how and what she shot, Starr notes that anybody who writes a report edits their words and what they choose to include, and as far as his research shows, Lange steadfastly adhered to her ``Hands off!'' rule while photographing a subject.

(Starr, the author of numerous books on California history, will be lecturing at the Getty at 4 p.m. Oct 27 in conjunction with the exhibit.)

So while Lange had the same ``documentarian impulse'' (the subject of Starr's lecture) that others did, she brought something else to her photos, which is why they grab the viewer.

After taking ``White Angel,'' Lange put it up on a wall in her studio next to a quote by Francis Bacon (1561-1626): ``The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.''

As you study the 80 images in the Getty exhibit, which encompasses 40 years of Lange's life, the question becomes, how did Lange live by this dictum and turn them into images we can't forget?

Her work didn't end with the Depression. Lange went on to document other important subjects, including Japanese internment camps and factory workers during World War II. She became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and when the government no longer employed her, she did photo essays for Life and other magazines. In the late '50s, she traveled extensively with Taylor, who was often sent as a consultant to such trouble spots as Cuba, Vietnam, Pakistan and India. There she took some stunning photos, sometimes working - as in early days - with Taylor talking to her subject.

Yet it's difficult to separate Lange from her Depression images. A 1938 photo she took called ``First Days of Unemployment Compensation in California: Waiting to File'' shows a line of men, most dressed in suits despite being there to collect a few dollars from the government. The shot is from an angle above, and either because they were unaware of Lange or because they didn't want to be identified, most of the men's faces are obscured by hats. One man, however, stares up resolutely at the camera, focused on Lange - almost as if he knew they were both stepping into history.

ABOUT LIFE: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF DOROTHEA LANGE and THE GRAPES OF WRATH: HORACE BRISTOL'S CALIFORNIA PHOTOGRAPHS

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles.

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays; through Feb. 9, 2003.

Tickets: Admission is free. Parking is $5 per car. No reservations needed after 4 p.m. weekdays or on Saturdays and Sundays. Information: [phone] or www.getty.edu.

The book on Bristol's photos

``John Steinbeck presents the Okies in all their stink and misery, their courage and confusion,'' a 1939 Life magazine article said about his classic novel ``The Grapes of Wrath.''

The text was accompanied by Horace Bristol's photos, which are now on display at the Getty. He and Steinbeck had visited the California migrant labor camps in the winter of 1937-38, planning to collaborate on a book, but Steinbeck - after doing the interviews - decided to write a novel instead.

Bristol's pictures of the camps, along with some from Dorothea Lange, were first published in a Fortune magazine article, but when Steinbeck's novel hit, Bristol's photos were reprinted. Then a few months later, when John Ford's film of the novel was made, another Life article compared scenes and characters of the films with Bristol's photos. The shot of the man chopping wood - shown here - was placed next to a shot of Henry Fonda as the novel's protagonist, Tom Joad. (The three articles are also on display in the exhibition.)

According to ``Print the Legend,'' a 1999 biography of Ford by Scott Eyeman, the legendary filmmaker studied the Bristol photos along with those by Lange in order to create the look of the film.

Judith Keller, curator of the Getty exhibition, notes that the environmental photos by Bristol, who like Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration, show how ``intense and really miserable'' the camps were.

Later Bristol sought to capitalize on the ``Grapes of Wrath'' connection, changing the titles of some of the photos. ``Nursing Mother in Camp,'' which is reminiscent of Lange's ``Migrant Mother,'' became ``Rose of Sharon,'' referring to a Steinbeck character; while ``Woman in Doorway'' became ``Ma Joad in Front of Cabin.''

The smaller Bristol exhibit is meant to complement Lange's work, but it also shows a contrast in styles. Bristol, as state librarian and historian Kevin Starr points out, was shooting for a magazine and may have had a different intention than Lange.

Some of the indoor photos ``almost look like they were made on the set because of the artificial light,'' says Keller.

Just look at the two ``Mother'' photos and Bristol's figure appears more posed. Did Bristol ask his subject to look off in one direction, while Lange waited until she saw her subject in a pose she wanted? We'll never know. But these two exhibitions raise the question.

- R.L.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1) ``Pledge of Allegiance'' (1942)

(2) ``Migrant Mother'' (1936)

(3) ``Farm Workers'' (1938)

(4) ``General Strike/Street Meeting, San Francisco'' (1934)

(5) ``Migrant Camp'' (1938)

Box:

The book on Bristol's photos (see text)