From 1916 until 1932, Lange operated a portrait studio. During the Great Depression she took her camera into the streets of San Francisco where she began to make exceptionally powerful images of people, which speak of the time and the world in which they were made; among the best known of these is White Angel Breadline (1933).
During the 1930s, California commissioned a report on the way of life of migrant laborers, and Lange made the report in collaboration with her future husband, Paul Taylor, an economics professor. Her photographs emphasized the laborers' dignity and pride in an environment of starkest poverty; the report resulted in the establishment of state-built camps for migrants.
From 1935 to 1942 she worked in the Farm Security Administration, documenting rural America. Her photographs were reproduced in thousands of magazines and newspapers, helping to create a national awareness of the farmers' plight and profoundly influencing American photojournalism by their simplicity and directness.
At the outbreak of war with Japan, Lange documented the mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps. In 1951, when she began to travel, producing photo-essays for Life magazine, e.g., Three Mormon Towns (1954) and The Irish Country People (1955). Lange's books include An American Exodus (with Paul Taylor; 1939) and The American Country Woman (1966).
"You know, so often it's just sticking around and being there, remaining there, not swooping out in a cloud of dust: sitting down on the ground with people, letting children look at your camera with their dirty, grimy little hands, and putting their fingers on the lens, and you just let them, because you know that if you will behave in a generous manner, you are apt to receive it, you know?" - Dorothea Lange