Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 21 Dorothea Lange Questions: |
Think Questions
1. Why might Dorothea Lange have chosen this point of view for her photograph? How would the effect of this picture be different if Lange had photographed the family from a distance? From above? If she had focused only on the woman's face and didn't include the children?
2. Why do you think Lange posed the figures to create a triangle? Why do you think she composed the photo to be so balanced? How would the composition hold together if the mother's arm was resting across the bottom of the photo? If the two older children were on the same side?
3. Why do you suppose this photograph became an ICON of the Great Depression?
4. How is a photograph different from a painting? Does a photographer have as much freedom in creating a photograph as a painter does creating a painting? Why or why not? Use Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother as an example to support your response.
5. What does "documentary" mean? How can a photograph be a social document? What can a photograph show that other documents cannot? Why would the United States government pay photographers to take pictures like this? For what could such pictures be used? Where could they be shown? Where do you see documentary photographs today? In what media can you see documentary photos that people in Lange's era could not?
6. Some documentary photographs, like this one, are made with the subject's permission. Others are not. Would you allow a documentary photographer to take your picture? Why or why not? Are there some circumstances under which you would allow your picture to be taken and others under which you would not allow it? If so, why?
7. Compare and contrast this photograph with James van DerZee's contemporaneous photo Harlem Couple. Consider: point of view of photographer, COMPOSITION, subject. Lange's photograph is considered documentary, and van DerZee's is considered a PORTRAIT. Is one photo more objective than the other? In what ways is van DerZee's photo documentary? In what ways is Lange's photograph like a portrait?
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