Dorothea Lange in Ireland - 60 years ago

The American photographer, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), is perhaps best known for her poignant photographs of migrant families and farm workers in 1930s America. She captured the faces of migrants who had traveled to California from the Midwest of America in search of work and a better life.

This photograph of Florence Owens Thompson surrounded by some of her children was taken at a camp for migrant farm workers in Nipomo, California in 1936.

Image source: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/

Lange's first trip outside of the USA was to Ireland. In 1954 Dorothea Lange traveled to Ireland on assignment with Life Magazine with her journalist son Daniel Dixon (1925-2009).

While they spent some time in Dublin initially, they were in County Clare for the majority of the one month that they spent in Ireland. Over the course of their stay, Lange took some 2,400 photographs, which are now held in the Dorothea Lange Collection at the Oakland Museum of California. These photos can be viewed online at the University of California's calisphere website.

A nine page article entitled Irish Country People was published in Life Magazine on 21 March 1955. It contains twenty one of Lange's photographs together with a brief sketch by her son detailing the scenes they witnessed.

A book, Dorothea Lange's Ireland was published in 1996. It contains 106 photographs that she took in Ireland as well as articles by academic, Gerry Mullins and her son, Daniel Dixon. Lange's trip to Ireland was also the subject of a film. In Dierdre Lynch's Photos to Send, Lynch travels to Ireland and interviews the surviving subjects of Lange's photographs.

Read more about Lange's time in Ireland on the Clare County Library Blog.