Personal Work: Friends and Colleagues
Dorothea Lange arrived in San Francisco from New York in 1918 and became immersed in the Bay Area art scene. She formed long-lasting friendships with photographers and other artists such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Anne Brigman, Willard Van Dyke, and the painter Maynard Dixon, whom she married in 1920. Her friendship with fellow photographer Imogen Cunningham was especially significant. The two families often shared holidays and parenting, with Cunningham’s son Rondal Partridge becoming Lange’s assistant on photographic road trips during the Great Depression. Throughout her career, Lange was an important figure in the West Coast photographic community, both socially and professionally. The Lange archive contains many photographs of her colleagues and friends.
To my mind she represents the almost perfect balance of artist and human being. . . . If any documents of this turbulent age are to endure, the photographs of Dorothea Lange will, most certainly.
