Best known for her iconic photograph Migrant Mother , photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) had a career that spanned more than four decades. In 1919 at the age of 23 she daringly opened a portrait studio in San Francisco. Meeting her husband, the painter Maynard Dixon, who was 20 years her senior, exposed her to the bohemian art world and the wild southwest, where she photographed Hopi country.
After living in Taos with Maynard, their two sons and a step-daughter Constance, they returned to San Francisco at the height of the Depression. Stresses on their marriage and livelihood led to their divorce. With the advent of the Great Depression, Lange felt compelled to take her camera out on the streets of San Francisco. The resulting photographs led to work with the Farm Security Administration as a documentary photographer.
In 1935, Lange married Paul S. Taylor, an economics professor at the University of California with whom she worked with in the field. Taylor and Lange lived, loved and worked together in intense collaboration until her death in 1965.