Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life

For renowned photographer Dorothea Lange, the object of photography was not taking a good picture, the object was the "consequences of the photograph." In other words, Lange saw photography in a social utilitarian light, though her work--even of such dark subjects as poverty, racism, and alienation--was hauntingly beautiful in an aesthetic sense. To a backdrop of over 350 of Lange's photographs we hear the photographer (interviewed in the 1960s) talking about her work, her life, and the animating forces that drove her--commentary augmented by contemporary interviews with a few of Lange's assistants and family members. Perhaps because Lange was filmmaker Meg Partridge's godmother (her grandmother, photographer Imogen Cunningham, was the subject for her Oscar-nominated Portrait of Imogen), this film plays more like an homage than a disinterested biography. You can hear in Lange's voice real strength and an occasional staged quality: she has, in effect, written her own script. Without detracting either from Lange's incontestable contributions or Partridge's enjoyable documentary, one still gets the feeling that there were a lot of wonderful tidbits about Dorothea Lange's life that didn't make it into the story. Still, even though the script sometimes flags, the photographs never do, and they offer more than enough reason to add this to most collections. Recommended. (R. Pitman)