In 1955, Lange became interested in documenting the criminal justice system, particularly the role of public defenders hired by the state to defend accused persons unable to pay for their own defense. She pitched the story to LIFE magazine, which gave her the go-ahead to start shooting. Lange found a compelling protagonist for this project: Martin Pulich, an earnest young public defender in Alameda County, California. Lange quickly immersed herself in the subject matter, shadowing Pulich through his meetings with clients and court appearances, developing a deep understanding of the complex and impersonal judicial system, and reinforcing her belief in the need for free legal representation for the accused. While the most memorable photographs from this series capture the intensity of the courtroom, and the fierce drive of Pulich’s advocacy for his clients, she also showed the dim holding cells, the paddy wagons, and the bureaucratic procedures that governed the lives of prisoner and counsel alike, creating an immersive context for the human drama of her story.
Ultimately, and to Lange’s dismay, LIFE declined to publish the story. However, other outlets picked up Public Defender and the images appeared in newspapers as well as in publications by the Legal Aid Society and the National Lawyers’ Guild. The uniform mounts and typed captions of several of the prints in this group suggest they were used for publication and/or exhibition. Today, Public Defender is regarded as one of the great achievements of Lange’s post-war period and an exemplary demonstration of photography’s ability to capture a complex and multi-layered situation.
As of this writing, it is believed that the 16 photographs offered here comprise the largest Public Defender group to appear at auction.
The photographs in Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection 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.