CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/9/2020

Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures opens today at MoMA

"I am trying here to say something about the despised, the defeated, the alienated," Dorothea Lange said in 1966. "About death and disaster. About the wounded, the crippled, the helpless, the rootless, the dislocated. About duress and trouble. About finality. About the last ditch." Her 1955–57 photograph, The Defendant, Alameda County Courthouse, California is reproduced from Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, published to accompany the exhibition opening today at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The first major MoMA show of the photographer's work in half a century, Words & Pictures presents Lange's most iconic works for the FSA and the United States government alongside early street photography and lesser-known works like this one, exposing the biases and flaws of the American criminal justice system. Crucially, both the exhibition and this beautifully produced volume emphasize Lange's embrace of written language to enhance and explain her often socially complex photographs.