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The Choice:

In 1918, photographer Dorothea Lange arrived in San Francisco, a small but sophisticated city, and soon opened a portrait studio. She focused her business on the city elites—especially those who had used the wealth created by commerce to build institutions of high art like the opera, the symphony orchestra, the art museum, and the California School of Fine Arts. She was an excellent networker, quickly joining the San Francisco Camera Club, then helping to found the Pictorial Photographic Society of San Francisco, meeting business leaders and cultural figures, and using her “charm, ambition, photographic skill, aura of vulnerability, and good looks” to attract investors and clients.

Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 44.

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Lange opened her studio in the same building as an established art gallery, where she often loitered to meet potential clients; an Elizabeth Arden salon was next door. She paid a high rent, did up the studio with velvet drapes and Arts and Crafts objects, charged high prices, and within the year was attracting clients from all over the region. By 1920, people were coming from as far away as Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Honolulu to sit for portraits.

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The networking, the self-promotion, and the photography work itself took many hours. As she later wrote, “I was working most of the time, day and night, Saturdays and Sundays, holidays.” (Gordon, 47) If Lange was to have any life outside her work, she would need to find ways to make time for it.

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Conversation #1

If you were Dorothea Lange, what would you have done in this situation to help with your work/life balance?

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The Decision:

Lange found her social life inside her work. She made her studio into a salon, where people could drop in to socialize. It became popular among the cultural elites of the city to make a date to meet on the black velvet couch in her reception room. In the afternoons, she served tea from an old samovar and tea cakes from Eppler’s bakery. By 5 pm, there were often “all kinds of people” lounging around. Sometimes they rolled up the rug and danced to jazz albums.

Even when she was in her darkroom downstairs, she left the door open, and came up if she heard footsteps above. In the fall of 1919, some particularly loud footsteps above led her up to meet the painter Maynard Dixon. Within months, they were married.

Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 42-48.

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Conversation #2

What could Lange have done to expand the range of choices for all photographers trying to balance life and work in 1919? Think about changes that could have been made to law, culture, common business practices, etc.

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Prompt #1

“California enacted its Sunday closing law eight years after the state entered the union [1858]. … Many Californians would have been happy to voluntarily shut their shops on Sunday. For the vast Christian majority of California, Sunday was the natural day of rest, and thus a law forbidding business during that time was of no great consequence.” (6-7) The law was soon struck down by the California Supreme Court in Ex Parte Newman because it sanctioned the Christian day of rest but denied the same benefit to Jewish people for their day of rest. In 1893, a new law was passed guaranteeing each California employee one day of rest in seven, giving the employer discretion on what day to choose. Of course, Dorothea Lange was a boss, not an employee, so in 1919 the law still allowed her to work as many hours and days as she liked.

Jeremy Zeitlin, “What’s Sunday All About? The Rise and Fall of California’s Sunday Closing Law,” California Legal History, 2012.

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Prompt #2

“Those standing in opposition to work-life reforms will probably continue to tell us that we cannot afford to help the breadwinners of low-income, middle-class, and professional families care about their jobs and care for their families. … They will argue that what happens inside a family is a private concern, not the purview of government. Or … that paid leave is important, but that it should be left up to employers to decide whether or not to offer it, not the government. … We can now plainly see that women’s increased labor supply has been good for our economy—and the evidence is that it’s not women’s employment that harms families, it’s inflexible, family-hostile workplaces and the paucity of high-quality, affordable care options for children and seniors.”

Heather Boushey, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016, 251-2.

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Image Credits

Weston, Edward. Dorothea Lange. 1920. Photograph. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_38004095

Lange, Dorothea. Unknown title. Photograph. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/dorothea-lange-langes-start-in-photography/3135/

Lange, Dorothea. Katherine Cohen Sloss. 1931. Photograph. Harvard Art Museums. https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/285378

Lange, Dorothea. John, San Francisco. 1931. Gelatin silver print, printed 1965. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/56378

Taylor, Paul Schuster. Portrait of Dorothea Lange. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001281052

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