Over 100 works from the personal collectionand the photographer's descendants will be sold in just two online sales since March 29 and April 5 from Phillips New Yorkk.
The two sales feature some of Lange's most indelible images from his decades-long career in photography, as well as many images that will be new to collectors.
Estimate $6,000 – 8,000
All of the images were in the photographer's collection at the time of her death, have passed down to his descendants and represent his entire career, from the first socially conscious images he made out of his portrait studio in San Francisco, through his work for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression, to her postwar documentary projects, largely made in the company of her husband and collaborator Paul Taylor.
The sale will feature a suite of 16 images from Lange's celebrated 1955 Public Defender series, in which his detailed portrayal of a public defense attorney and his clients established the model for a new kind of photojournalism.
It is the largest group from this series to appear at auction
Born in Hoboken in 1895, Dorothea Lange he learned to photograph as a young man before his departure for the West Coast in 1918. Talented and ambitious, Lange opened a portrait studio that catered to high-end San Francisco. After witnessing firsthand the social upheaval caused by the Depression, she took to the streets with her camera, snapping images of union rallies, newly unemployed, men, women and children without homes or incomes, images that would set the trajectory for the rest of his career.
During the Depression he traveled the country under the auspices of Farm Security Administration, documenting the poverty suffered by Americans and creating some of the most indelible and culturally relevant images of the 20th century. He brought his incisive and empathetic documentary style to a variety of national and international subjects during and after World War II. Lange witnessed a world in transition and her camera captured it all.
His photographs show that the history of the XNUMXth century is the history of individuals: their struggle, their success and their perseverance
Estimate $7,000 – 9,000
