>> e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> booktv sat down with linda gordon to talk about her by biography, on dorthea lange. it is about one half hour. >> host: linda gordon, who was dorthea lange? >> guest: many people don't know her name, but i can very tell you that everyone in the country knows her photographs. one of her photographs, which is often called my grandmother, has been called the most in this photograph in america, sort of

the michael jordan of photographs. it's been in every textbook. what is a visual image that you have of the great depression, they will describe this photograph. >> host: or was the photograph taken? >> guest: it was taken in california. it's interesting because she was the main person in the center of the u.s. during the great depression. and these were migrant workers who moved along from field to field from one agriculture operation to another. this particular woman had been in her family had been working

on seasonally. but it was work herriot crop was destroyed and they were putting their best in when there was no work, hoping that they would find work at their next job. >> host: what you is a photograph taken? >> guest: it was taken in 1930. and somehow it was and it was very functional many people said it was a great contribution to the people that were stuck in the fields of smack has she ever been identified? >> guest: yes, she was. later in the 1950s she came out with her heritage being an american indian, having been a full-blooded cherokee. in the 1930s she would not have

that identity. it's a very interesting question because everyone assumed otherwise. so i wondered how had they responded if they knew. >> host: you write in your book "dorthea lange: a life beyond limits", that not only by it not only by my areas of expertise to buy the available source material, dorthea lange did not document her own life. >> guest: she's no one had ever expected to be famous. and it was really way towards the end of her life when she died in 1965 at seven years old. she eventually accepted herself as an artist. and she eventually was a studio portrait photographer and then when she began to do what we

call today documentary photography, which is not a word that existed at the time, she really didn't think of herself as an artist in any way. she thought she was practicing her craft crafted she was an employee of the federal government. she had to travel around to all of these camps where the farmworkers were located. and because of that, she kept every scrap of paper. >> host: or was she born? >> guest: she was born in hoboken, new jersey. and she had an ordinary class childhood. at age seven years old she got

polio. what is actually a new disease at the time. and she was lucky that it only crippled one of her legs. at that time had she had the polio crept into her lungs, she would have died. so she was actually very lucky. she later would say that this was the most important formative part of her identity. her disability. he was very good at hiding it, however, she wore long skirts. her mother was afraid that she would be unmanageable because what we think is a slight for me in olympic. and her mother told her to hide it because she wanted her to be at the woman and have a husband and so on.

and it was new york city that she was in love with. she was a self-taught person. she never went to college, she did not study to photography formally. she got herself a job at a portrait studio and taught herself to photograph. >> host: how did she make it to the west coast? >> guest: with a girlfriend in 1918. when she was 23 years old. they were going to have an adventure. first they took a train and then they took a ship through the gulf of mexico, arriving in san francisco. as luck would have it, they were pickpocketed and all of their money was taken. if it hadn't been for that, you probably would've gone on that

they traveled further. but she stayed forever in san francisco and berkeley in that area. to pricing. she got a job right away, she tried to get the money together. and then within a couple of years she had a thriving photographic studio. >> host: linda gordon, a when did she start with the federal government and in what capacity? >> guest: a series of wonderful accidents for her. her photographic studio was in downtown san francisco and her clientele was very wealthy people, but she would look out the window and she saw many of these people sleeping on the street, people begging. and for the heck of it she decided to go out and start doing those photographs with a

friend of hers and they put up an exhibit of her in oakland, california, gallery. the exhibit was seen by man who would become her husband, an economist, a professor at the university of california, berkeley, they thought the photographs was in facial and he hired her worse to try to help all of these agricultural margret's. all of these agricultural migrants. so he took the photographs washington dc to the department of agriculture. they took one look at the photographs and she said we have

to work in the project. in 1936 she worked for the farm security agency. >> host: how long was she with them? >> guest: she worked with them for several years through the fall of 1939. many of the enterprises occurred at this time. and during those years she worked like a jupiter. she may have been disabled, but she was a very strong woman and she was traveling through the major agricultural valleys of california and this is without air-conditioning where it's 120 degrees in the shade and she was sleeping in cheap motels on her u.s. government per diem.

and she was happier than ever doing this work. she liked it so much more and i think her studio portrait photography has begun but it wasn't helping her to grow as a photographer, it was more of something that she was very good at. so if you look at that with all of her documentary work, she always has a purpose in front of her, but she had made these photographs of people that were flattering, she enhance people's identities and she turned that same eye towards work. and that was shocking and i

think the one famous photograph really mirrors that. because you see a john and tired woman. she was a woman of great beauty in one of dignity and you know the pose with the baby in her arms, she would feel the weight of the world as to how she is going to see these things. >> host: after 1941, what did she do? >> should actually did some interesting things during world war ii. she photographed the first meeting united nations in 1945 herriot very optimistic and hopeful of what the united nations can do. she also photographed thing that she was a little angry about, and that was from when the u.s.

government tried to imprison all the japanese-americans during the war. 120,000 people and somewhere between two thirds and two fifths were u.s. citizens and they were rounded up and they had never been accused of conviction or accused of disloyalty. so she photographed thaas the wd having her first health problems it would ultimately kill her. one that people today don't know about so much anymore because locally pouliot has been wiped out or you but there's a phenomenon called post polio syndrome. and apparently it remains in a

more quiet way inside the body and can be reactivated and she went through that and she began to develop ulcers. she died of cancer because there were no treatments. >> host: was she political? >> in a certain way. she never belonged to any political organizations. she had a more spiritual feeling. but she adored franklin roosevelt because she not only felt this but you have to understand what must amends for her to know that a fellow polio sufferer was a president of the united states. this was a powerful and emotional attachment. and when she did all this work

on a she had no problem with saying the people that the way she would introduce yourself to people that she was going to photograph, they were farmworkers and sharecroppers, she would say that i work for president roosevelt. and she would even say yes, i make propaganda for president roosevelt and she didn't feel that that diminish the importance of her photography. she felt that we needed to do something to help these people that were paid terrible wages and many of them are people who were driven out of their homes by the dust bowl throughout the midwest and another thing about that it was very unusual is that one third of her photography art people of color. that includes the majority of

the farmworkers or they were african-americans from the deep south. and there is such a sadness about that that was established. none of these photographs of people of color were published at the time. the head of the program felt that the country wasn't ready for respectful photographs of people of color. since they wanted this to build local support for her agricultural programs, they felt that they could only do that by showing white people. so it's months later that people came to recognize this importance. she had this perspective that you really saw when he saw the photography of the japanese-americans. and she felt in her heart that this is a racist idea that

japanese-americans can be trusted. and after all, german americans were not locked up in prison. >> host: wishy well-known in her time? >> guest: she was not. most of her photographerphotographs were published without her name on it. and anyone, someone from china or kenya can go to the website of the library of congress, and you can get access to her photographs and you can even buy beautiful prints of them and there's no permission involved. and she did do a lot of photography in the 1950s and the 1960s that is her private photography and not worked differently. but there were some wonderful

things despite not being a full string during that timeframe. >> host: will she unique at the time? being a photographer? >> guest: many women did it out of their own homes. so you could do this in one room while you took care of your children up her dinner. especially someone who is on the road, she was absolutely unique. not only the only woman but the only pair in. when she married paul taylor, they had six children. and she was extremely lucky in marrying him. he adored her and he thought she was a genius.

he was secure in his own career but he never felt the slightest resentment of her. he even traveled with her and he would engage people in conversation while she photographed them it has part of her technique was that she needed to get people to relax into their natural body language. the studio portrait of doctor for now is that most people get nervous and tense up when they face a camera. so she would get them to relax and should apply that technique when she was out in the field. she became fluent in spanish so that she could speak with mexican-american farmworkers. >> host: paul taylor was investigated by the fbi, wasn't he a map.

>> guest: he was, but they didn't find a single thing on him. the one that was a parking ticket. but they were suspicious of him because of his opposition to the japanese internment. and i think that it is because of him that she developed a consciousness that maybe this was really not a necessary war right thing to do. and she moved with him in the six children. >> host: you also note that she wasn't the best of mothers. >> guest: as a biographer, you write a biography but you don't think that they are saints. i have mixed feelings about it.

[inaudible] her children used to call her dictator.. she was fussy about her house and she was a good coat and had a housekeeper and she once corrected with her grandchildren who is carrying a dish and said that's not the right way to hold the dish. and so she was very difficult and where she was, it was a pretty tough world for a woman to be in. and she was centered in the direction of percent think

interesting ideas to her boss who felt that her job was to take photographs and do nothing else. and so they knew that she was -- that her photographs were the most popular. but he didn't like her telling him what to do. and he didn't want to do that. and the real agony was about leaving her children and not being a good mother. one of the things i found so telling is that some of those children were her biological children. one was paul taylor's children.

one criticized him for leaving. he was gone for huge amount of time and put his children in foster care. when his wife and first wife left. so i find that very interesting. i don't want to minimize the fact that her children were very hurt. when i interviewed her children in the 80s, they could still feel the pain of having been left by their mother. and that was a real thing. it was a job that she could not keep up with. she would've lived and died a portrait photographer. >> host: linda gordon, what do you teach at the university?

>> guest: i'm not really a photographic expert. i teach a lot of different things. i teach women's history to the undergraduates and i also teach a course on social movements which is something i'm interested in. even though dorthea lange was not this type of person anyway, a social person, there was a time of intense social movement during the great depression where there is unemployment. but one thing that you might call politics happened just before she died. and i have a copy of it at home from an african-american photographer that was working in the civil rights movement, and they wanted to establish a

collective project of the civil rights movement and they wanted her to be the mentor and sponsor and teacher. she felt very honored by that because without a political affiliation, she fell very downtrodden and people were now standing up and fighting for this. but unfortunately she really couldn't do much for them. but she could not have traveled to the southern states, which is what they would have liked. >> host: when did she start to become known? >> guest: she had misdiagnosed and elementary omen for at least four years before she died.

and they first thought it was a continuation of her all-stars. and when she died was cancer of the esophagus and what i understand now medically is that the acid reflux caused by all serves can actually burn out and cause cancer of the esophagus. and she suffered through awful kinds of treatments and they did a surgery for which they forced tubes down and tried to ream out her esophagus. at other times -- it was just a sign that it was essentially not a terrible disease in the 1960s. so she was in a lot of pain and she did however do something

very interesting in the final years. she was given in photography show at the museum of modern art. she didn't live to see the show, but she did live to design it. and she did that, everything herself, she chose every photographic content and she dictated how it should be arranged and she would show the photographs and she died in october and the show opened in january of 1966. and i think it's typical of her that she really didn't care about this but knowing herself and what she believed was more important. by the end of her life she was saying that i really think that i am an artist. and i think being able to say that was deeply gratifying for

her. >> host: you have a particularly favorite photograph? >> guest: i think it's not necessarily the most famous one. she often had -- her greatest feature was her eyes. not her camera but her ability to see and enter mindframe an image that she would be extraordinary and i think that they're a couple that i like that show more than one person and it actually shows people in a relationship. there's one towards the end of the book that was done and another project i haven't mentioned yet where she photographs world war ii construction sites that were very important to the bay area. she was looking particularly at the women workers in what she

choses to people, a man and a woman who are in a relationship and who are obviously having a fight. and it is a still photograph and yet you can almost feel the electricity going back and forth between these two people. there's another one that shows the mother in the background and a girl that might be 11 years old and the girl is something that we see in the background, the worried mother and so we see that emotional connection with her was a positive one or an angry one. and so i kind of like those.

>> we've been talking with window gordon, professor of history at new york university. author of "dorthea lange: a life beyond limits" as well as other books. thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. it's been a delight. >> next on the booktv college series, professor andrew ross talks to booktv about his book, "creditocracy and the case for debt refusal" in which he discusses the implications of mass indebtedness in the u.s. and suggest ways for americans to respond. >> in your book, "creditocracy and the case for debt refusal", you dedicate this book to fellow activists in the depositions movement. what is that? >> that's a reference to groups >> that's a reference to groups that i've been working with. there's a lot of occupy wall

street the balls around the debt crisis, there was a financial crisis in the way that it was manifesting for most people was in a very heavy debt burden. not just to the level of nations face. and so i've been very active with a number of groups in the wake of that. trying to build what we think of as this movement. >> host: what are the goals of this group and were the actions that should be taken? >> in terms of actions one of the recent things we have done is a project called the ruling jubilee, which is adept observation project greatly can't wait for the federal government to offer that belief. we haven't been able to for one reason or