Title: California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal Narrative
Abstract: Paul Taylor was an economist who pioneered the study of agricultural economics. Dorothea Lange was a photographer whose pictorial images of the Great Depression and her outspoken feminist views made her a celebrity. Taylor worked in anonymity and Lange in the public eye. They met in 1934, divorced their spouses, and married. Their thirty-year marriage became one of the enduring intellectual love stories of the twentieth century. In 1939 their book, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion, was a pathbreaking collaboration between a social scientist and a brilliant photojournalist. The pictorial images as well as the text drove home the Great Depression's desperation. Jan Goggans's study of the Lange-Taylor partnership is a brilliant look at an intellectual relationship that was so symbiotic that the couple kept notes on a single piece of paper with each person penning his or her notes on one side. Taylor's writing about rural California strikes, particularly those of Mexican workers, laid the foundation for the development of agricultural history as a distinct field of study. It was Lange's photographs that highlighted the grim reality of migratory labor. Taylor and Lange also studied urban economics, documenting the San Francisco general strike of 1934.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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