“You know there are moments such as these when time stands still...”
—Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange’s charming yet bold photograph of one of San Francisco’s iconic cable cars is typical of her documentary style. Following her successful career as a studio portrait photographer in the 1920s, Lange turned her lens to the streets, photographing the increasing number of people displaced by the harsh economic conditions gripping the country at the outset of the Depression. In subsequent decades, Lange continued to refine and deepen her documentary approach, focusing frequently on her immediate surroundings in the Bay Area. In the present square-format work, Lange’s cropping, camera angle, and composition draw the viewer’s eye to the neatly crossed legs of her subject. It is just such gestures that Lange was so adept at capturing, and this photograph encapsulates the humanising impulse in her work that has kept her images accessible and relevant.