[ Photographs ] Lange, Dorothea White Angel Breadline, San Francisco Silver print, 14 x 11 inches, with the photographer's handstamp on verso. 1933; printed 1950 E25000-35000 Formerly in the collection of the Lange family, This oversize widely

[ Photographs ] Lange, Dorothea White Angel Breadline, San Francisco Silver print, 14 x 11 inches, with the photographer's handstamp on verso. 1933; printed 1950 E25000-35000 Formerly in the collection of the Lange family, This oversize widely reproduced image was printed under the direct supervision of the photographer and is purportedly the first documentary picture she ever made. The White Angel Mission, which was across the street from Lange's portrait studio, was observed by her on a daily basis. Glancing out the window she watched the group of resigned men hanging out, waiting for a meal. Although Lange was interested in photographing the scene she was worried about the possibility of resentment, even violence, so she asked her brother Martin to join her. Drawing on her skills as a portraitist, Lange ventured forth, and encountered no hostility. She wrote, "You know that you are not taking anything away from anyone: their privacy, their dignity, their wholeness. " In the months that followed she left her studio increasingly to wander the city streets logging hours that would provide her with the experience she would need to work for Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. Lange's text reads as follows: " Life for people begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it. But this particular section was not far from the place where my studio was, and I observed some things that were happening. My powers of observation are fairly good, and I have used them; I like to use them. Sometimes I'm aware of what's going on behind me, you know. My angle of vision was almost 360 degrees. That's training. But I have done some photographs of this. One of them is my most famed photograph. I made that on the first day I ever went in an area where people said, "Oh, don't go there. " It was on the first day that I ever made a photograph actually on the street. " Dorothea Lange: Photographs Of A Lifetime (New York, 1982, pp. 44-45 The image also appears in Dorothea Lange (The Museum of Modern Art, 1966, p. 20, and Dorothea Lange, American Photographs (San Francisco, 1994, pl. 1