“Dorothea Lange in Oregon, 1939,”@@http://blogs.opb.org/oexjournal/2010/06/17/new-exhibit-opens-dorothea-lange-in-oregon-1939%E2%80%9D/@@ the exhibit that lines the halls of the second floor of Knight Law Center, contains poster-sized duplications of Depression-era photographs portraying the challenges of rural poverty in the Willamette Valley and greater Oregon.
Lange and others were hired between 1935 and 1944 by the Farm Security Administration @@http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/@@, an agricultural agency of Roosevelt’s New Deal@@http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARnewdeal.htm@@, in an effort to promote collective economic reconstruction.
“I grew up in Josephine County, and I actually recognized some of the landscapes shown,” said sophomore Myray Reames, who’s studying photojournalism at the University.@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Myray+Reames@@ “These people built the life that we have now. They interacted with land in a way we simply aren’t familiar with.”
Dorothea Lange@@http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap03.html@@ was not only an esteemed photo essayist, but also an ethnographer who took copious field notes. She spent a whole year in the Pacific Northwest documenting persisting dwellers and refugees from the infamous Dust Bowl. Excerpts from her reports are included with many of the exhibit’s photos, which focus mainly on migrant families who traveled to Oregon to work on farms and in mines.
“I’m excited and surprised to see this quality and quantity of her work outside of a museum,” said Marsha Shankman, publicity coordinator for the Maude Kerns Art Center @@http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marsha-shankman/21/288/88@@and wife of University English professor Steven Shankman.@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Shankman@@
“I became interested in this exhibit mainly because of my studies of Doris Ulmann,” Shankman added.@@http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1603@@
Ulmann, who, like Lange, studied (a full generation earlier) at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Manhattan@@http://www.ecfs.org/@@, had similar undertakings in her own work, documenting impoverished live in Appalachia. Knight Library currently maintains sets of Ulmann’s original glass negatives.
This display of Lange’s work is sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center @@http://waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu/@@as part of “From Wall Street to Main Street: Capitalism and the Common Good,” the center’s biennial “theme of inquiry.”@@http://waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu/_pages/events_themes/current_theme.html@@
“Dorothea Lange is such a treasure,” Morse Center director Margaret Hallock @@http://waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu/@@said. “She’s one of the prominent documentary photographers of the ’30s and ’40s. John Steinbeck was, in fact, very motivated by her photographs when he was writing ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’”
Anne Whiston Spirn, author of the award-winning “Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field,”@@http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92656801@@ found the negatives of these images at the Library of Congress@@http://www.loc.gov/index.html@@ and to the benefit of curious Oregonians had them developed. Spirn, an acclaimed photographer and professor of landscape architecture at MIT, conducted a speech at the Law Center in late January in conjunction with the hosting of the exhibit.
Despite the University calendar’s claims that the event ends today, it will actually continue from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. throughout the weekend due to a somewhat loose agreement on the return of the prints to their lender, the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.@@http://www.ochcom.org/@@