The images are just as heart-wrenching today as they were eighty years ago.At the same time that pioneering photographer Berenice Abbott was busy capturing the urban fabric and trailblazing anthropologist Margaret Mead was laying the groundwork for modern anthropology, Dorothea Lange mastered the intersection of the two in her influential Depression-era photojournalism and documentary photography. Restless Spirit could be used in the classroom for any unit on the Great Depression or as accompaniment with a Steinbeck text, offering visuals and context from a powerful woman. Partridge poignantly reveals how Lange attempted to share her perspective through a touching combination of narrative and photographic text.

Lange saw injustice and hardship in the world even in childhood, and her photography seems to encapsulate that recognition of suffering as human.

Unafraid to live on the road and get close and personal with her subjects, Dorothea Lange seemed to be a woman who still struggled with the expectations of womanhood of her time, fighting her own tension between domesticity and dreams of freedom through photography and independence.

Restless Spirit captures the image of a woman who wanted to make a difference in the world on her own terms. Albeit somewhat romanticized, I trust that Partridge's portrayal is genuine, as someone who knew her personally and drew extensively from interviews, films, and oral history from friends and family. At least I knew she existed.Įlizabeth Partridge opened my eyes to Dorothea Lange, the woman. I suppose it could be worse she could be completely unfamiliar to me. Remember, she was part of WPA maybe, or some other alphabet agency? Starving children, harsh conditions, dirty women and all that-big for women and the working artist movement, or something like that.Regrettably, that's what I remember about Dorothea Lange from my American History course. That woman who took pictures of the Okies moving West. Dorothea Lange was another name I thought I knew but didn't.

Dorothea Lange by Elizabeth Partridge