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Dorothea Lange
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Anne Whiston Spirn
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Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field Paperback – September 1, 2009

by Anne Whiston Spirn (Author)
4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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Daring to Look presents never-before-published photos and captions from Dorothea Lange’s fieldwork in California, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina during 1939. Lange’s images of squatter camps, benighted farmers, and stark landscapes are stunning, and her captions—which range from simple explanations of settings to historical notes and biographical sketches—add unexpected depth, bringing her subjects and their struggles unforgettably to life, often in their own words.

When Lange was dismissed from the Farm Security Administration at the end of 1939, these photos and field notes were consigned to archives, where they languished, rarely seen. With Daring to Look, Anne Whiston Spirn not only returns them to the public eye, but sets them in the context of Lange’s pioneering life, work, and struggle for critical recognition—firmly placing Lange in her rightful position at the forefront of American photography.

“A thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange’s career. . . . Spirn, a photographer herself, traces Lange’s path, visiting her locations and subjects in a fascinating series of ‘then and now’ shots.”—Publishers Weekly

“Dorothea Lange has long been regarded as one of the most brilliant photographic witnesses we have ever had to the peoples and landscapes of America, but until now no one has fully appreciated the richness with which she wove images together with words to convey her insights about this nation. We are lucky indeed that Anne Whiston Spirn, herself a gifted photographer and writer, has now recovered Lange’s field notes and woven them into a rich tapestry of texts and images to help us reflect anew on Lange’s extraordinary body of work.”—William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis
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  1. Print length
    376 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Chicago Press
  4. Publication date
    September 1, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    8.25 x 1 x 10.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0226769852
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0226769851
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“As a lifelong friend of Dorothea Lange, I was absolutely astounded and thoroughly pleased with Daring to Look. Anne Whiston Spirn has hit the nail on the head: she knows the secret of understanding good  photography--and of understanding Dorothea Lange's life as well. An astonishing book.”

-- Rondal Partridge, photographer and former assistant to Lange


“Dorothea Lange has long been regarded as one of the most brilliant photographic witnesses we have ever had to the peoples and landscapes of America, but until now no one has fully appreciated the richness with which she wove images together with words to convey her insights about this nation. We are lucky indeed that Anne Whiston Spirn, herself a gifted photographer and writer, has now recovered Lange’s field notes and woven them into a rich tapestry of texts and images to help us reflect anew on Lange’s extraordinary body of work.”
-- William Cronon, author of Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West


“Dorothea Lange is known as one of the greatest American photographers, but she was also a remarkable observer whose field notes have largely remained unpublished until now. In Daring to Look, Anne Whiston Spirn, a landscape architect, photographer, and writer herself, has edited Lange's field notes, adding her own interpretative essays on Lange's work, and rephotographing some of Lange’s sites. This is a very important book deserving wide readership because it provides a wonderful combination of the socially conscious work of two gifted artists and writers.”—Dolores Hayden, Yale University
-- Dolores Hayden, Yale University


"Dorothea Lange is one of America’s greatest documentary photographers. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field is a very important book. It provides a fascinating insight into her FSA photographs and writings during that time. Ms. Lange’s photographs, especially the work she did for the FSA were a great inspiration for so many photographers, including myself."
-- Mary Ellen Mark, photographer

"In this thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange's career, Spirn focuses on the photographer's largely unpublished 1939 portfolio and champions it as a mix of the visual and the verbal. Lange's stark photographs and accompanying field reports testify to her desire to show real Depression-era Americans—displaced and downtrodden, but carrying on nevertheless—as honestly as possible. . . . Spirn, a photographer herself, traces Lange's path, visiting her locations and subjects in a fascinating series of 'then and now' shots, an homage to Lange, who Spirn compellingly argues deserves to take her place as 'one of the most important American artists of the Twentieth Century.'" ― Publishers Weekly

“What a sui generis and beautiful imagination (and manifestation) of a book: paean, recontextualization, historicizing, rediscovery, documentation, investigation and collaboration. It is its own genre, and so lavishly produced; the writing is sharp as a bird's beak, poetic and exacting. And Spirn’s own photographs make good company beside those of Lange. I loved reading her notes, feeling the picture take on even more weight that way. My wife and I both lived in this book in those last weeks of summer.”

-- Forrest Gander, Brown University


“I've just finished reading Daring to Look. Wow! Where to begin? As a historian, the first aspect of the book that leaps out at me is the thorough and imaginative research in a variety of sources and the broad contextualization in both public policy and social and economic history. The other aspect that leaps out simultaneously, really, is just how beautifully it is produced. It is such a pleasure just to hold and look through. Spirn’s introduction makes Lange come alive, places her in her time, and just skewers those who would diminish her achievements. Wonderful. And the end, returning to find the places she photographed, was a brilliant idea, and Spirn draws the circle with great sensitivity.

And I just love the pictures. I don't find the people depressing. Somehow they carry a dignity, sometimes even a nobility, that gives them an iconic quality. They look, by and large, like just fine people, classic Americans—they couldn't be anything else. The landscapes are so evocative, too. This is not to say that the book doesn't document the hardships of the Depression—it does, in both a systemic and very personal way—but the characters transcend them with grit, resilience, and acceptance.”
-- Michael Katz, author of The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War

"These images endure, not as relics of the past but as vital, living documents. We stare, the images stare back, and recognition flashes in our eyes." -- Louis P. Masur ― Los Angeles Times

"From her broad knowledge base and sympathetic understanding of the history of the locale, Spirn offers a rich study of past and present life and landscape." -- Anne Hammond ― Times Higher Education Supplement

"A revealing glimpse of Lange's working methods and social vision." ― Choice

“In the fascinating Daring to Look, a product of dogged archival reconstruction and shrewd readings of individual photographs, Anne Whiston Spirn presents a case study of Lange’s artistic agility. . . . Spirn demonstrates how vigorously the joint effort of word and image rebuts the standard deprecations of Lange’s work.”

-- Jordan Bear ― Bookforum

"Imaginative and beautifully produced, Anne Whiston Spirn's book is a delightful hybrid: a newly published primary source, a photography book with a fine introduction . . . an apologia for Lange against her often snobbish critics." -- Linda Gordon ― Oregon Historical Quarterly

About the Author


Anne Whiston Spirnis professor of landscape architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A photographer herself, she is the author of The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design and The Language of Landscape.
 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 0 edition (September 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226769852
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226769851
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.58 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.25 x 1 x 10.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Dorothea Lange

    Dorothea Lange

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    Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Anne Whiston Spirn

    Anne Whiston Spirn

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    "My goal is to change the way people see and how human settlements are designed and built. That is why I write. I want to tell an engaging story and to inspire readers to shape the world into a humane habitat."

    In 2001, Spirn received the International Cosmos Prize for "contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and mankind." Her first book, The Granite Garden, is credited with "touching off the ecological urbanism movement." Her next book, The Language of Landscape, argues that landscape is a form of human language, and that we endanger ourselves by failing to learn and use this language. Daring to Look reflects on how the dynamics Dorothea Lange photographed in the Great Depression are still shaping American lives and landscapes. Spirn's most recent book, The Eye Is a Door, invites readers to pick up a camera and use it to see, think, and discover the stories landscapes tell. Currently, she is working on a book about the West Philadelphia Landscape Project, which she has directed since 1987.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
30 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

BigDog
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Background on One of the Greats
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2011
Verified Purchase
I've always been drawn to Dorothea Lange's Depression-era photography. No one who ever saw her photo of the sharecropper mother can really forget.
This book has an excellent selection of Lange's work from the depression and after. The author attempts to retrace several of Dorothea Lange's more well known or productive trips for the FSA. The on location shots taken by the author almost 60 years later gave me a perspective on the changes in our landscape. Her description of Lange's evolution from studio based portrait photographer catering to the well off, to on location recorder of the cataclysmic social events going on in the nation during the Depression gave me a new insight about the work Lange produced.

Overall, however, the real heart of this book is the selection of Dorothea Lange's photos and the accompanying caption notes by Lange, as well as the expanded background provided by the author.
The black and white prints are stark, dramatic and so effective at conveying the suffering as well as the incredible endurance of the people Lange photographed.
8 people found this helpful
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Frederick C. Kamau
5.0 out of 5 stars Rare combination of pen and image
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2008
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Anne Spirn's latest book is really quite outstanding. She combines the clear eye of a superlative photographer (her own) to write in limpid prose about the clear eye and conscience of another (Dorothea Lange's). This is not just a meta-documentary, a documentary of a documentary, it is also an examination of the changes that have been wrought in the United States over the last two to three generations, in the physical landscape, in the socio-economy, and in our moral landscape. Lange represented in her photographs some of the critical ironies in the fabric of America - the high mindedness of the WPA program, the debilitating material poverty of her subjects and equally, a spiritual nobility as revealed in the images and her notes. Lange herself, her photographs and the vast subject matter she made her essay are little known in the new generation. Anne Spirn has done the next generation a great service in tilling this soil anew.
21 people found this helpful
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Troy64
5.0 out of 5 stars Very happy.
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2020
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We purchased this book as a gift. It came very well packaged in multiple layers and was in near perfect condition. Very happy with this purchase.
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Mistersea
5.0 out of 5 stars Great photos
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2021
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Beautiful book and a must have for anyone interested in photography or her work specifically.
One person found this helpful
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The Scone Ranger
4.0 out of 5 stars Dorothea Lange
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2010
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If you are a first-time viewer of Lange's work, or a long-time admirer, this is an excellent work to own, and share with friends. In particular, there is a wealth of anecdotal information for many of her images re the circumstances under which a picture was captured. Lange had a gift for establishing rapport with people in very difficult / desperate circumstances. Poverty does not lend itself to "outsiders" peering into it as a gawker let alone with a camera to record the level of misery. That she was able to consistently obtain such images is a testimony to how passionately she plied her craft.
5 people found this helpful
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David C. Lienemann
5.0 out of 5 stars Great
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2009
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of the 4 or 5 dorothea lange books I picked up, this one perhaps has the best selection of photography. Lange's field notes combined with the authors interpretations and cheerleading, which are at times worth skipping, none the less offer a better picture of lange's pictures. Definitely worth the money and an interesting enough read, though the pictures were my focus.
19 people found this helpful
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Claudia
5.0 out of 5 stars Great story telling of the tough times people went through ...
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2014
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Great story telling of the tough times people went through to survive. The pictures are wonderful and show the story without reading it if desired,
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Carl Mack
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2018
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Great book
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Top reviews from other countries

J. R. Richardson
5.0 out of 5 stars Photography with a purpose.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 2, 2014
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It is hard not to feel extreme pity for these people depicted in this book. Dorothea Lange retained her objectivity in recording them just as they were. If I had not known that FDR was doing all he could to help these people, then these images would have distressed me far more than they did. I probably donate more generously to modern-day charities as a result of reading this book.
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