dorothea-lange-american-masters-profile-to pr4emere on PS Aug 29

[Bill_1856]

FYI
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/0701127655/dorothea-lange-american-masters-profile-to-premiere-on-pbs-august-29

[Drew Wiley]

I wonder if this is a re-run of the previous PBS documentary on her, which was excellent and didn't spare any punches. Her life was complicated.

[Bill_1856]

I wonder if this is a re-run of the previous PBS documentary on her, which was excellent and didn't spare any punches. Her life was complicated.

Didn't see it. Hope it's good.

[Eskeyp]

Thanks for the link to the video of Dorothea Lange, looked very interesting

[Merg Ross]

Didn't see it. Hope it's good.

Bill, this might also interest you -- an excellent look at Dixon and Lange:



Sorry, broken link. Do a search for "Child of Giants" DVD

[Tin Can]

Thanks!

This means I have to watch TV Tonight. Gads, pigs are flying!

[Drew Wiley]

What I find so remarkable is how drastically Dixon changed his painting style during a particular split-up, when the blues hit him hard. While this work might not have
the collector appeal of his typical Western genre paintings, it sure had a lot more in it to take note of. The dude could really paint, in a way I never realized before.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yup got it set to record on the PVR. We get it on Sunday evening...

[Drew Wiley]

I might order a disc copy one of these days. Just had lunch with an ole friend - my first print dealer - who intends to watch it. He know the local lore better than I do, even some of the family themselves. I won't elaborate, but it turns out one particular famous photo family around here is related to another, through marriage.
Never heard that on the separate documentaries. Coincidentally saw the outcome - the progeny - just twenty minutes ago. I've known him too for years, and never
knew his own DNA was hybridized from both silver and platinum. I long knew about the platinum ancestry.

[Bill_1856]

I just watched it, and it IS superb.
I haven't read the Metzger biography for many years, and was happily surprised by some of the content of the video. (There was a problem with the sound from our PBS station, and my "big-screen" TV was blown out by lightening last week, so had to watch it on a tiny little substitute.)

[richardman]

What a remarkable program. This is a new program, I believe, not from any older documentary.

I will budget to purchase the DVD...

[csxcnj]

Amazing documentary, she was a hell of a photographer and human, pretty much an ass#€[% of a mom but her kids ended up loving her after they went through some life of their own. I experienced the same dynamic with my mom.

[dsphotog]

My Dorothea Lange story:
I was at work at the Camera Center store in Modesto, a man came in with original prints of the migrant mother series, asking if I'd copy them...
He explained that he was the infant in the picture, and his mother had just died, now they needed copies for the other family members.
I explained copyright, did some research, & found they are public domain, so I shot copy negs, hand printed them on Ilford warm tone paper.
Further research finds his migrant mother is buried in Lakewood Cemetery, near here.

[DrTang]

Did not like the documentary as a 'film'

however, I liked many of 'areas' it "explored" and found the subject of great interest

I just couldn't get over how..sick as she was..frail as she was.. she kept knocking out JUST GREAT photographs until the end

an amazing photographer

[TXFZ1]

Interesting that she did not think of herself as an artist until the "around the world trip." I felt really sad that she did not live to see the opening at MOMA. It was a great insight into her life.

David

[Lenny Eiger]

I was really moved by this. I am quite familiar with her work. Still, what an exquisite photographer, someone who could really "see". I fear it will become a lost art. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Lenny

[Bill_1856]

She died of esophageal cancer (a very, very bad way to go). Does anyone know if she smoked?

[Drew Wiley]

She smoked, and it was a re-run. I first saw it a few years ago. But at least they re-broadcast it at an early time in the evening, over the weekend. Pretty riveting.
Maybe I admire photography like that so much because it's not the kind of work I seem capable of doing at all. But the film itself was superbly put together. The house looked familiar - probably one of those places over the years some repair contractor called me to check out on some technical question. I tend to remember things like the deck and the shapes of specific live oak trees. Her eccentricities were well known, but maybe that's what drove her to such a level of visual dedication.

[tgtaylor]

Did anyone notice that before the Leica she had switched to a Pentax?

Thomas

[Merg Ross]

The house looked familiar -

North Berkeley/Euclid Ave., just north of Codornices Park.

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks, Merg. Yeah, I was indeed there once. I remember the situation well. It was a maint problem related to those high decks. But my memory locks into the specific shape of trees. I rarely forget those. ... And Thomas, I sure did spot that little Honeywell Pentax, cause that's was my first camera. I still have the lens.

[Jac@stafford.net]

She died of esophageal cancer (a very, very bad way to go). Does anyone know if she smoked?

Often esophageal cancer is often preceded by Barrett's esophagus which is considered a precancerous condition that has a 1:10 chance of turning into cancer today, but the chances were higher in her era. It is a painful enough condition on its own, and often exacerbated by a hiatal hernia for which the surgeries vary, but outcomes fail often enough to worsen the condition of both the stomach and esophagus. She was probably in a lot of pain for years before the cancer awoke.

Smoking can exacerbate the condition. Smoking can exacerbate or cause hundreds of issues.

I have exactly the condition and sometimes I feel like I'm dying. (I do not smoke.) There are a few years left, God willing.
.

[Sal Santamaura]

She died of esophageal cancer (a very, very bad way to go). Does anyone know if she smoked?According to this


http://books.google.com/books?id=6iCO092EG4wC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=was+dorothea+lange+a+smoker&source=bl&ots=QGQejs353l&sig=b8NRqfmdGKv_t1JFPzJQ8rHRmfY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kCQGVLWqIYTdoASS3YC4Bg&ved=0CFsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=was%20dorothea%20lange%20a%20smoker&f=false


she "couldn't stop smoking" (see the 12th line). That was when she'd just arrived in San Francisco, i.e. was very young. Given the times, I'd speculate she continued to smoke for many years after that.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Assume no such thing. As you showed she as young. The fact is: smoking does not cause esophageal cancer. The cancer evolves largely from genes and GERT. Look it up.

I am sorry the appreciation of Lange's work has been distracted. She was a hard worker.

[Drew Wiley]

My mother suffered from a hiatal hernia and wisely never had the operation. I risk the gastro thing form my dad's side of the family, and I know the link to eso.
cancer due to that; but my wife is expert in that field, so I know how to manage it before it becomes a serious risk. Nicotine is just bad for anything because it
constricts blood vessels and impairs healing in general, plus the smoke is an irritant etc etc. Glad I never got into that. But it was routine back in that era. Even AA
was a heavy smoker, and that probably did play into his health problems later in life. I recently watched both my next door neighbor and my father-in-law slowly die from smoking those damn coffin-nails, and now someone here at work has just learned he has stage four lung cancer.

[dsphotog]

It was the right time, and she was the right person to document the Great Depression.
Today I think people are much more wary of anyone pointing a camera in their direction...

[Jac@stafford.net]

... Even AA was a heavy smoker, and that probably did play into his health problems later in life.

AA also appreciated a good drink and one source suggested that his excursions were also respites from the same. We may never know and it does not matter. Smoking and so-forth means nothing. The man lived and worked. That is all that matters.

[Drew Wiley]

... and it's well documented that he regretted not taking care of his health later in life. Customs and attitudes have changed. But I was also brought up mostly on
fresh vegetables and fruit, even poultry we raised ourselves. And I wasn't allowed more than one soda a week, which I had to walk two miles to get. My dad ate red meat and bacon n' eggs every day, but all the after-hours farming and other constant property chores kept him healthy. But he smoked a pipe until he was 50, and that caused made him prone to pneumonia, which eventually killed him at 96. But I look at someone like AA who gave up his backpack at 32, and what me and my cronies still do at twice that age and beyond. Yeah, sure, my days of 90 and hundred pound packs seem to be over, but at least I can still carry my own two
week load with a 4x5 system in it. I travel a lot slower than I once did, esp downhill. But as long as I can get from Point A to Point B, I'm just going to take this
thing of age and health itself one step at a time. If the day comes when I can't backpack with a large format camera anymore, so be it - I'll still have plenty of opportunities to use one. More worried about what arthritis will do to my darkroom work. But that should improve a bit once I get away from computers completely.
We all have our particular limitations, but at least we're doing what we enjoy in spite of them. From time to time I hear from some of my ole cowboy friends of my
youth, with their macho attitude toward Old Golds, and learn how miserable their health is now, if they're lucky enough to even be alive. No thanks.

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...] My dad ate red meat and bacon n' eggs every day, but all the after-hours farming and other constant property chores kept him healthy. But he smoked a pipe until he was 50, and that caused made him prone to pneumonia, which eventually killed him at 96.

Ninety-six is good!

Farmers where I lived were susceptible to lung disease, emphysema in particular due to mixing powdered chemistry in the field, and from over-spray. I got a touch of it plus a small benign tumor from military service exposure to god only knows what was in the air. Fortunately, it is not a progressive thing.

Then asked the source of his excellent health in his nineties, my Grandfather said, "Smoke only the finest cigars, drink only the best bourbon, and never touch the hand of a politician."
.

[Drew Wiley]

Some of the aboriginal Indians where I grew up lived very long lives, because in that particular area white contact and commercial firewater came relatively late. But they had assimilated some of the ways of the whites, including certain bad habits. So, true story... the newspaper was interviewing a man for his 115th birthday. He
could still walk a bit, had decent eyesight, and had a 110 year old wife. They asked him what he attributed his long life to. He replied, "clean living". When they asked
him to elaborate on that statement, he said that when he had turned 105 he learned that smoking is bad for your health, so threw his pipe away.

[Sal Santamaura]

I think the primary factor in living a long, healthy life is to do a good job picking one's parents. In other words, genetics plays a huge role. Nonetheless, there can be substantial variation in outcomes around what's genetically "preordained."

Here's my prescription:


Moderate, balanced caloric intake from minimally processed food
Regular, moderate exercise
Regular routines, including bedtime and sleep duration
Unless you're one of those rare people who lucked into working at something you actually enjoy, cut it off at 40 hours and leave it at the office.

Having followed this advice and relied on modern medicine to treat whatever genetic failings lifestyle alone can't cope with, I'm predicting an age 85 departure for myself. That's about five years longer than my parents' longevity. Bonus for "good behavior."

My wife's father made it to 96; her grandmother to just shy of 101. I tell her she's going to reach 106, adding "pace yourself spending down, since it'll have to last about 20 years after I'm gone." :D:D

[Drew Wiley]

This is getting pretty off-topic and partially my fault. But look at how drastically the longevity factor changed in places like Hunza once it got "modernized". Same
where I was - the Indians would walk fifteen miles a day barefoot just to get to the store, were thin, and quite a few of them got to be over a hundred. Introduce
processed foods and Gallo wine, obesity kicked in (much like Polynesians) and, combined with Res violence, the average lifespan dropped to around thirty years.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Some of the aboriginal Indians where I grew up

May I ask where that was? My greatest grandmother was native to what became Quebec.

[NickyLai]

Someone twitted link of Dorothea Lange documentary (1965) and said "Do yourself a favor and watch this.....".

Part I: https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/191509

Part II: https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/191510

It was produced by KQED and first aired in 1965. Recently remastered digitally into 1080p from the 16mm film print.

I watch it on a 30" full-screen whole story streaming online, enjoy it and learned something. Much appreciated and believe it is okay to share here as the DIVA project is both for learning and public interest.