In the early 1950s, Lange began making photographs that fit into a set of themes she had devised, including Consumers, Relationships, City Life, and Ballet. Lange’s notations on the reverse of the print offered here indicate that this image of a man stepping from the street onto the sidewalk fell under the Ballet theme. Lange’s biographer, Milton Meltzer writes of this series, ‘Her Ballet series tried to capture the beauty of motion in those actions of everyday life we are scarcely conscious of.’
The photographs in Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection, Part Two were in the photographer’s collection at the time of her death and thenceforth passed to her descendants. The images represent the entirety of Lange’s career as one of the foremost documentary photographers of the 20th century, from work made before her engagement with the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration, in the 1930s, to the travel photography that absorbed her in her final years, as well as more personal images of her family. Each print bears a Family Collection stamp on the reverse.