Capturing the Home Front by Dorothea Lange

A new exhibition now open at the Australian National Maritime Museum reveals some of iconic moments of World War II as captured by renowned photographer, Dorothea Lange.

Capturing the Home Front is open now until 16 February 2020, and features work by Lange, on loan from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and photographs by Toyo Miyatake, a Japanese American internee and professional photographer from Los Angeles who smuggled a lens into Manzanar (one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from December 1942 to 1945) and built a camera to capture camp life.

© Dorothea Lange
© Dorothea Lange

Considered an icon of documentary photography, Dorothea Lange established her reputation as a documentarian when she was commissioned by the American government to capture and reveal the devastation wrought on Americans by The Great Depression.

© Dorothea Lange
© Dorothea Lange

During World War II, Lange was commissioned by the US Office of War Information to photograph America’s factories, shipyards, and farms as the nation went to war. Her unvarnished depictions of the forced internment of Japanese Americans from coastal California to inland camps in 1942 were considered too realistic and raw for public consumption, and Ansel Adams was commissioned to document the desolate camp at Manzanar in a better light.

© Dorothea Lange
© Dorothea Lange

Complementing the American content are reproductions from Australian collections of the evocative work of Sam Hood, William Cranstone, Jim Fitzpatrick, and Hedley Cullen who documented wartime industry, Japanese internment, family and country life on our side of the Pacific.

© Dorothea Lange
© Dorothea Lange
 

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November

Sydney: The exhibition delves into the State Library of NSW's vast collection of two million images, showcasing 400 photos – many displayed for the first time.

February

Ballarat: Scotty So is a Melbourne-based artist who works across media, using painting, photography, sculptures, site-responsive installation, videos and drag performance.

Melbourne: Jill Orr’s The Promised Land Refigured is an exhibition that reworks the original project created in 2012 with new insights that have emerged in the past eleven years.

Sydney: Curated by Lynn Smith, Urban Enigmas aims to unlock the subtle mysteries that lurk in out-of-the-way places in big cities: back lanes, river banks, street markets, abandoned factories, old bridges and so on.

March

Ballarat: Nan Goldin is an American artist whose work explores subcultures, moments of intimacy, the impacts of the HIV/AIDS and opioid epidemics on her communities, and photography as a tool for social activism.

Sydney: The Ocean Photographer of the Year Award, run by London based Oceanographic Magazine is in its 4th year and has quickly achieved recognition amongst photographers around the world.

Albury: The National Photography Prize offers a $30,000 acquisitive prize, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.