If you liked Sold on a Monday and Beautiful Exiles, you’ll love this novel about strong-willed trailblazing photographer, Dorothea Lange, whose fame grew during World War II and the Great Depression. “Hooper excels at humanizing giants….seamlessly weaving together the time, places and people in Lange’s life…For photo buffs and others familiar with her vast body of work, reading the book will … familiar with her vast body of work, reading the book will be like discovering the secret backstory of someone they thought they knew.” —The Washington Post
In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.
By the early 1930s, as America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice—the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.
At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, dares to be different. But her choices came at a steep price…
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Loved this book!
More than ever, we need books like this – in celebration of a woman overlooked by history, one whose story helps shed light on our own contemporary search for love, identity, and meaning.
I knew the photography of Dorothea Lange but little about her personal life so I was glad to be given the opportunity to read Learning to See by Elise Hooper.
Hooper’s novel offers an accessible narrative of Lange’s life from her point of view. Lange’s childhood polio left her with a limp from a deformed foot. She established a successful portrait photography career until the Depression when her work dwindled. With two children and an artist husband, Lange had to give up her studio to work for the Farm Security Administration.
Using her portrait experience, Lange created iconic photographs that recorded the devastation of the Dust Bowl and the misery of farm migrants. During WWII she was employed by the Office of War Information to document the internment of Japanese Americans.
Through Lange’s eyes, readers experience the human suffering of poverty and systemic racism.
Lange’s marriage to her first husband, artist Maynard Dixon, was strained. Her extensive traveling meant leaving her sons and the book addresses her son’s anger and acting out. While photographing for the OWI she worked with Paul Taylor who became her second husband.
Famous photographers appear in the story’s background, including Ansel Adams.
The novel is “inspired” by Lange’s life. Hooper offers a woman filled with doubts and remorse while facing up to the authorities who repress the photographs that too honestly recorded atrocities and the forgotten.
Lange’s life as an artist and a woman will enthrall readers.