Dorothea Lange At The Diocesan Museum: The Power Of A Gaze That Changed History
From May to October 19th, 2025, the Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan, Italy, will host one of the most anticipated photography exhibitions of the year: “Dorothea Lange” curated by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi, and organized in collaboration with CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography.
Marking the 130th anniversary of the renowned American photographer’s birth, the exhibition presents 140 photographs that capture some of the most dramatic moments in U.S. history between the 1930s and 1940s. From farm workers devastated by the Dust Bowl drought to the segregation of the Japanese-American community following Pearl Harbor, Lange gave a face and dignity to those left on the margins, with the sensitivity of an artist and the courage of a reporter.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Migrant cotton picker, Eloy, Arizona. 1940, The New York Public, Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Dorothea Lange, Young evacuee Kimiko Kitagaki watches over the family’s luggage before leaving by bus, in half an hour, for the Tanforan Assembly Center. Her father had worked in the laundry and dry-cleaning business until the day of the evacuation, Oakland, California. 1942. The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Her images, including the iconic “Migrant Mother”, are true symbols of social photography: documents that still prompt us to reflect on issues such as poverty, migration, inequality, and human resilience. As the museum’s director, Nadia Righi, stated, “Dorothea Lange’s photography is an invitation to reflect on what each of us can do to help build a better world.”
Who was Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (Hoboken, 1895 – San Francisco, 1965) began her path in photography as a portraitist, opening a studio in San Francisco in 1919. However, it was during the years of the Great Depression that her work took on a unique historical and social significance.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother. Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age: thirty-two, Nipomo, California. 1936, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Dorothea Lange, Once a farmer in Missouri, now a migrant agricultural laborer on the Pacific Coast, California, 1936, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
In 1935, travelling alongside economist Paul S. Taylor (who would later become her husband), Lange documented the extreme conditions faced by American agricultural workers. This journey led her to join the government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) project, through which she produced thousands of photographs portraying a nation in crisis.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Manzanar Relocation Center. Street scene of the barracks at this WRA center. The windstorm has subsided and the dust has settled. Manzanar, California. 1942. The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Dorothea Lange, A large sign reading “I am an American” placed in the window of a store between [401–403 Eighth] and Franklin Street on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was closed following the evacuation order for people of Japanese ancestry from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a graduate of the University of California, would be relocated along with hundreds of evacuees to WRA centers for the duration of the war Oakland, California. 1942. The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Despite tensions with Roy Stryker, director of the FSA’s Information Division, Lange established her unmistakable style: an empathetic, direct, and unflinching gaze. Her work during World War II—particularly her documentation of the internment of Japanese Americans—marks another fundamental chapter in her career, in which the artist risked her own reputation to denounce injustice.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Country store on a dirt road. Sunday afternoon. Note the kerosene pump on the right and the gasoline pump on the left. Rough, unfinished wooden posts have been used to support the porch roof. Black men are sitting on the porch. The store owner’s brother stands in the doorway. Gordonton, North Carolina. 1939. The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Rondal Partridge, Dorothea Lange, photographer for the Resettlement Administration, California, 1936, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
The curatorial vision
It focuses on the peak of Dorothea Lange’s career, when, between the 1930s and 1940s, the American photographer became a witness to epochal events that disrupted the social fabric of the United States. The exhibition layout, developed with documentary precision and artistic sensitivity, highlights the dual nature of Lange’s work: on one hand, a tool for social critique; on the other, an aesthetic testimony to the human condition. As the curators state, her significance in the history of photography lies precisely in her ability to combine empathy and visual power, transforming each shot into a universal narrative.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Home of a client of the Rural Rehabilitation project. They purchased eight acres of raw, untilled land with an initial payment of fifty dollars, money saved from the relief fund Tulare County, California. August 1936. The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Dorothea Lange, Free family children at the entrance of their home, dressed in Sunday clothes, Dead Ox Flat, Malheur County, Oregon. 1939, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
In 1941, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in the 1950s she collaborated with Life magazine and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. She died in 1965, shortly before the opening of her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition at the Diocesan Museum of Milan is a visual and human journey through faces, stories, and landscapes that still speak to us today. Through the compositional and narrative strength of her images, Dorothea Lange invites us not to turn away from the suffering of others, but to listen, embrace it, and transform it into responsibility.
LEFT: Dorothea Lange, Theatre in Leland, Mississippi, 1937, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington; RIGHT: Dorothea Lange, Plantation overseer. Mississippi Delta, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1936, The New York Public Library | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
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