CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/4/2021

Independent vision in ‘The New Woman Behind the Camera’

This March 1942 photo by Dorothea Lange, titled “Japanese-American owned grocery store,” is reproduced from The New Woman Behind the Camera, published to accompany a major exhibition looking at the many ways midcentury women helped shape Modern photography around the world, on view now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her introduction, National Gallery of Art curator Andrea Nelson writes, “Lange was aware of and concerned about the roundup of Japanese citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that prompted the United States to enter World War II, but she was, according to photo historian Beverly Brannan, ‘unprepared for how strongly she would react to the racial and civil rights issues posed by the internment.’ Lange’s opposition to the policy was subtly but undeniably expressed in her photographs, causing many of them to be ‘impounded,’ designated out of line with the government’s purposes.⁠”

Dorothea Lange, "Japanese-American owned grocery store, Oakland, California, March 1942," gelatin silver print, 19 x 24.5 cm (7 x 9 5/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.