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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Photographs / Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) - San Francisco
Exhibition print from DOROTHEA LANGE - PHOTOGRAPHIEN, Galerie Bilderwelt, Berlin 1998 The photograph “San Francisco, California. Friends and neighbors congregate to bid farewell... 29 April 1942”—was captured Dorothea Lange after she was formally hired by the federal War Relocation Authority (WRA) in the spring of 1942 to create a visual record of the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066. Her documentation of this process was remarkably extensive, sensitive, and uncompromising. The Extent and Scope of Her Documentation • Geographic and Temporal Scale: Over several months in 1942, Lange traveled extensively across California (including San Francisco, Oakland, Hayward, Byron, and various rural farming communities) and into temporary assembly and concentration centers like Tanforan and Manzanar. • Comprehensive Narrative: She captured the entire lifecycle of the displacement: families registering for exclusion, sorting through what property they could carry, wearing identification tags like parcels, congregating on sidewalks to say goodbye to friends, boarding buses and trains under military guard, and arriving at dusty, makeshift barracks. • Humanizing Detail: True to her documentary roots (established during the Great Depression), Lange focused heavily on personal dignity, family bonds, children clutching belongings, and the overt anguish and confusion of American citizens. The Suppression of Her Work Ironically, because Lange's documentary instincts led her to capture the stark injustice, human misery, and administrative cruelty of the program rather than a sanitized government narrative, the U.S. Army impounded the vast majority of her photographs. Over 95 percent of her WRA collection was stamped "Impounded," hidden away in the National Archives, and kept out of the public eye for the duration of World War II, remaining largely unseen until decades later. Dorothea Lange's Photos of the Internment of Japanese-Americans This video provides an overview of Dorothea Lange's assignment for the War Relocation Authority and features many of the powerful photographs she captured during the 1942 forced removals.
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