Walking Towards Dorothea
Tracking the Footsteps of the "People's Photographer"

Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn was born May 25, 1895 in Hoboken New Jersey, a commercial and manufacturing center which lay across the Hudson River from New York City.  The town, incorporated in 1855, was originally settled by Dutch immigrants in the mid-17th century, but by 1895 over half of its 45,000 population was predominantly German immigrant families, like Dorothea's ( Funk & Wagnalls; Meltzer, p.3).   Several other prominent Americans come from Hoboken, including Frank Sinatra, born December 12, 1915,  Alfred Kinsey, born June 23, 1894,and Alfred Stieglitz, born January 1, 1864.  Hoboken was ALSO the home of Hetty Green, born November 21, 1834, who, starting in 1902, lived in "a cold-water flat for $19 a month", yet became the "richest woman in America" by speculating on Wall Street - a fascinating woman for a future research topic! (Meltzer, p.3) For Dorothea, who grew up there in the early 1900s, Hoboken must have been quite a sight. With its port of entry for immigrants and imports from overseas, and a railroad terminal connecting it with the continental US, her hometown undoubtedly offered Dorothea views of workers, of transport traffic, and most of all of people, that intrigued and excited her.  Of interest to us as students of "The History of Photography, it was this place of enterprise and hopefulness that became the first view for the emerging vision of one who became later known as Dorothea Lange, the "People's Photographer" (Tabachnick), and the social documentarian of the Depression (see "Social Documentary" in the Photography section of Funk & Wagnalls.

Dorothea's father, Heinrich "Henry" Martin Nutzhorn, was born in 1868 to Bernard and Dorothea Fischer Nutzhorn.  Henry's father operated a grocery store in Hoboken, and his brother Frederick (Bernard and Dorothea's eldest son) helped.  Henry, rather than work in the family trade, studied law, and passed the New Jersey bar in 1891.  He operated a law practice with a partner for several years, and then continued on his own.  On May 27, 1894 Henry married Joanna "Joan" Caroline Lange in the Lutheran Church of Hoboken.  They moved into a rented house at 1041 Bloomfield Street, one block west of Washington St., the main thoroughfare of Hoboken.  It is here that Dorothea was born, just one year later. A brother, Henry Martin, was born four years later, and the family moved to Weehawken, the river town immediately north of Hoboken. 

Dorothea's mother was the second generation of a family of German immigrants from Stuttgart.  Dorothea's grandmother, Sophie Vottler, had come as a girl to Hoboken, along with 3 older brothers in their twenties, a six-year-old younger sister, and their mother Ottelia.  Milton Meltzer, author of Dorothea Lange: a Photographer's Life,  tells us that "Migrating as a solid family group, uncommon among many ethnic groups, was typical of the Germans." (Meltzer, p.4) What I found fascinating, here, is that Sophie's brothers had been trained as lithographers in Germany, "where the art had been invented by a Bavarian."  When they set up shop in America, they listed themselves in the city phone directory as "artists".  Sophie grew up to be a dressmaker, and two of her brothers became lithographers, like their uncles. Some of the articles I've read remarked that Dorothea did not consider herself an "artist" so much as someone who saw a job to be done (especially one that was NOT being done by others!) and did it. Perhaps the comparison with her uncles, who self-advertised as artists, was too much for Dorothea.  Whatever the case may be, Dorothea remarked that her grandmother recognized her as an artist by the age of 6, or at least as someone who "has line in her head", by which she meant someone who can distinguish between "what was fine and what was mongrel, what was pure and what was corrupted in things, and in workmanship..." (Meltzer, p. 5)   Another interesting note is that the Vottler family sailed to America in the steerage of the ship, "the cheapest and roughest passage, and the family's pretensions were such that they kept this a secret for a long time." (Meltzer, p.4)  "The Steerage", of course, is the subject of one of Alfred Stieglitz's most memorable photos, and it must have looked similar to that even 40 years earlier. Sophie, born in 1848, married Frederick Lange, born 1836, and they settled in Hoboken, from where he took the ferry everyday with his brother Carl to work in the tea trade in lower Manhattan.  Meltzer speculates that Dorothea's grandfather Frederick must have died early, perhaps before she was born, because she never mentioned him in any of her published interviews (Meltzer, p. 5).  Sophie's sister Caroline (Dorothea's aunt) worked as a seventh-grade school teacher, and never married.

This section on the background of Dorothea Lange is rather lengthy, I know, but it is precisely this kind of information that interests me the most.  It is easy to see why Lange's photos are so memorable and moving and remarkable.  What is harder to understand, I think, is where the origins of her vision lay.  To learn that Dorothea is the child of recent German-American immigrants, that she came from a family of artists, that her family was cohesive and enterprising, and that she lived in a bustling town in the heyday of America's immigration age and of its emerging global capitalism, are all significant factors that, to me, help explain why she photographed, what she photographed, and who she photographed.  And it is THIS kind of information that interests me, as a student of photography, and a (some say "paparazzi") practitioner.  I want to know WHAT makes a photographer, and who and HOW is one "called".  In other words, what distinguishes the paparazzi from the portrait photographer, and the photojournalist from the iconic image-maker that spurs a generation, and ennobles, envisions, and enriches a world. 

A significant event for Dorothea happened when she was seven years old - she contracted poliomyelitis.  Little was known about what caused or cured polio, and the outcome for most of those mysteriously afflicted was precarious at best.  Dorothea survived the fever, but her right leg  was permanently weakened, and her right foot thereafter partially failed to bend.  The resulting limp made her feel "different" from the other kids, as it limited her physical freedom, and was the source of  life-long periodic discomfort.  It  also created disaffection towards her mother, whose admonitions to " walk right" in front of others only made Dorothea more painfully aware of her disability.  This experience of physical disability is credited by many as the source of  Lange's empathy with those who are disadvantaged or disabled by social circumstances.  It is also credited by Dorothea as something which made her stronger, and more independent.  Many people, in later life, didn't even know she was disabled in any way.  Yet, like the grain of sand that produces the pearl, her early disability, and the pain and isolation it caused her, formed the core of  her personality, as she grew up to become one of America's greatest photographers, one who "virtually defined the look of photographic realism, and established photography as a powerful agent for social justice." Handman

When Dorothea was four, her family had moved a few miles away from Hoboken, but they returned when she was 12 following the her father's disappearance.  The reason for his abandonment was unrecorded, unspoken, and perhaps unknown, but some speculate that there could have been legal or financial problems which forced his disappearance.3  In any case, the fact of abandonment, and the loss of her father, figured strongly in Dorothea's life, and served as a second foundational stone upon which her lifework was built. 

The most direct result of her father's disappearance was that Dorothea's mother took her two children back to Hoboken, where they moved in with Dorothea's grandmother, dressmaker Sophie Lange.  And THIS, it appears, is where Dorothea's REAL education as a photographer began.   In 1907, when Dorothea was 12,  her mother  found work at the New York City Public Library in the Lower East side, which paid $55/month, enough at that time to get by.  What this meant for Dorothea was that she and her mother ferried across to Christopher Street in Manhattan every day, walked across the Lower East Side to Public School 62, and there she attended 7th and 8th grade. The school was made up of kids of whom 95% came from families that did not speak English.  Furthermore, Dorothea said, she was "the only Gentile among 3,000 Jews", a exaggeration, Meltzer claims, that probably accurately describes what it must have felt like to a child. The school was run by "Julia Richman, the first woman to be made a district superintendent of schools" , and was staffed by some of the most experienced teachers in the city.  The immigrant students were ambitious, hungry for knowledge, and "aggressively smart".  Dorothea had a hard time keeping up, and once again felt as an outsider in this atmosphere of overwhelming ambition.  (see Meltzer p. 10). 

The most significant part of the day, for Dorothea, was in the afternoon, when she walked by herself to the Library , and  waited for her mother to finish working.  These daily walks, and the immersion in books at the library (which Dorothea says she looked at more than read) formed the final leavening, I think, of her maturing with the personality of a great photographer.  The sense of freedom and independence afforded her at such an early age, and the ability to live and work and walk amongst strangers, appear to be significant ingredients in the making of the photographer-who-emerged.  For Dorothea Lange developed, as a photographer,  into one who enabled others to feel trusting, and trusted by her, such that they opened up, and and they allowed themselves to be seen. It is not enough, it seems, to have empathy with others and their circumstances; it is just as important that others have trust in who you are, in what you do, and how you do it.  Somehow, through these diverse early experiences, Dorothea developed into one who not only empathized with outsiders and the "unseen", but who learned how to walk with them, and be trusted by them.  We are all the wealthier for that ability.  She embodied, I think, the promise of America  - "Give us your tired, you hungry masses yearning to be free; we will allow them to see and be seen, to prosper and to grow; to walk proud and work hard; and to become a part of all the bounty around us."  She was able to DOCUMENT the Depression, I believe, because she was born and raised on all that makes us American.  She could experience the devastation of uprootedness and dislocation like one who has gone through it already, and yet who knows what the world is like when it works right, too.

1. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia in World Almanac Detailed Record from San Francisco Public Library, accessed online 2/23/06 at http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy.sfpl.org.

2. "The Unblinking Eye: a Portrait of Dorothea Lange" by Satya Tabachnick [age 13-Dorothea's grand-daughter?], from www.newmoon.org, January/February 2006, accessed 2/23/06 from?????????

3.Dorothea Lange - a Photographer's Life, by Milton Meltzer, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, NY, 1978.

4. Review of "Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life" in Quik Vids by Gary Handman [head of the Media Resources Center at the University of California's Moffit Library in Berkeley], American Libraries, March 2002; accessed online 2/23/06 from San Francisco Public Library, at http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy.sfpl.org.