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Dorothea Lange’s Granddaughter Continues Her Legacy

WUNC | By Anita Rao,
Frank Stasio
Published November 18, 2016 at 12:18 PM EST

Dorothea Lange is best known for her portraiture photography documenting America’s Great Depression. Her image “Migrant Mother” depicts a destitute woman with three children in California. It is one of the most recognized photographic portrayals of that era. When Lange passed away in 1965, her granddaughter, Dyanna Taylor, inherited one of her cameras and began to follow in her footsteps.

 Dorthea Lange

But Taylor soon realized that she could never fill her grandmother’s shoes, so she turned to filmmaking instead. Taylor recently decided to turn the camera lens back on her own family. She documents her grandmother’s life and legacy in the film “Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning.” This film and two others by Taylor screen this week at North Carolina State University’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design. The film “Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World,” screens tonight at 6 p.m. Host Frank Stasio talks with Taylor about her family history and filmmaking.

Watch the trailer for Taylor's film about her grandmother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7JpdfESwKs

Photographer Dorothea Lange on the beach. Lange died in 1965 leaving behind a long legacy of social ducmentary work.
Rondal Partridge /
Photographer Dorothea Lange on the beach. Lange died in 1965 leaving behind a long legacy of social ducmentary work.
White Angel Breadline is one of Dorothea Lange's most famous photographs. She took it in 1932 in San Francisco.
Dorothea Lange /
White Angel Breadline is one of Dorothea Lange's most famous photographs. She took it in 1932 in San Francisco.
Migrant Mother has become one of the most iconic images of the Great Depression. Dorothea Lange took this photo at a peapickers plant in California in 1936.
Dorothea Lange /
Migrant Mother has become one of the most iconic images of the Great Depression. Dorothea Lange took this photo at a peapickers plant in California in 1936.

Copyright 2016 North Carolina Public Radio
Anita Rao
Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
See stories by Anita Rao
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio