Dorothea Lange

mounted, signed, titled, dated, and inscribed 'for Seema and Bill' in ink on the mount, a '1163 Euclid Avenue Berkeley, California' stamp and a clipped newspaper reproduction of the image on the reverse, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1933, probably printed no later than 1940

Likely the photographer to Seema Aissen Weatherwax, no later than 1940

Houk Friedman, New York

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, 1997

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

Palm Beach Photographic Centre, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, March 2011

Middletown, Delaware, Warner Gallery at St. Andrew's School, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, October - November 2011

Thomas J. Maloney, U. S. Camera 1935, p. 157

Ansel Adams, How To Do It Series, No. 8: Making a Photograph, An Introduction to Photography (New York, 1935), p. 93

Edward Steichen, ed., The Family of Man (New York, 1955), p. 151

John Szarkowski, Dorothea Lange (The Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 20

Therese Thau Heyman, Celebrating a Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange (The Oakland Museum, 1978), p. 57

Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime (Aperture, 1982), p. 45

Therese Thau Heyman, Sandra S. Phillips, and John Szarkowski, Dorothea Lange: American Photographs (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994), pl. 1

Karen Tsujimoto, Dorothea Lange, Archive of an Artist (Oakland Museum, 1995), p. 9

Keith F. Davis, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange (Kansas City, 1995), cover and p. 21

Pierre Borhan, Dorothea Lange: The Heart and Mind of a Photographer (Boston, 2002), p. 71

Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-1950 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), pl. 483

This photograph is on double-weight paper with a semi-glossy surface. The print is in essentially excellent condition, except for a very faint small handling crease adjacent to the center of the right edge which is visible only upon close examination under raking light. There are two minute chips in the top edge of the print, near the left corner, only visible upon close examination. The print is drymounted to its thin board mount, and has become very slightly detached at the upper left and lower right corners. The mount is very lightly soiled and somewhat age-darkened along the right edge. Affixed to the reverse of the mount is a clipping from the New York Times, which illustrates this image and lists an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art entitled 'Toward the New Museum.' When examined under a black light, this print does not appear to fluoresce.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Taken in 1933, during San Francisco's depression years, White Angel Breadline depicts the isolation, as well as the dignity, of poverty, as one man turns away from a breadline sponsored by a wealthy community widow known as 'the White Angel.'  At the time of its making, Lange was a portrait photographer.  Her successful San Francisco studio catered to an affluent clientele, and her reputation among the city's artistic set was assured.  But the breadline was not far from her studio, and on one occasion she ventured into the crowd to take pictures.  ‘I made [White Angel Breadline] on the first day I ever went in an area where people said, "Oh, don't go there,"’ she related to an interviewer. 'It was on the first day that I ever made a photograph actually on the street' (quoted in Photographs of a Lifetime, p. 44).  The image, one of Lange's most memorable, became a prototype for the photographs of the down-and-out she would make during her F. S. A. years.  'I had to get my camera to register the things that were more important than how poor they were—their pride, their strength, their spirit' (quoted in Restless Spirit, p. 47).  In White Angel Breadline, the central figure’s clasped hands and set jaw encapsulate the resilience that Lange was inspired to capture with her camera.

The mount of this print is inscribed by Lange ‘for Seema and Bill.’  The first name in this dedication is believed to be that of Seema Aissen Weatherwax (1905-2006), the Ukrainian-born photographer.  Seema Aissen came to America with her family in 1922 and relocated to California in 1929.  There she immersed herself in the artistic and leftist political life of the West Coast, joining the Film and Photo League and becoming friends with Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Woody Guthrie, and others.  For a time, she was romantically linked with Chandler, Edward Weston’s son, and Lange is known to have given her a photograph of the ruggedly handsome Chan.  In 1938, she was hired by Ansel Adams to manage his darkroom in Yosemite.  Charis Wilson Weston recounts the wild ‘Parisian “Apache” dance’ Aissen performed with Edward Weston at several parties in Adams’s Yosemite studio (Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston, p. 221, photograph pl. 56).   

In Seema’s Show: A Life on the Left (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), author Sara Halprin notes that, before meeting her husband Jack Weatherwax in 1940, Aissen dated several men.  It is possible that Lange inscribed this photograph to Aissen and a boyfriend named Bill before that date.  Aissen married Weatherwax in 1942, and the couple remained married until the latter’s death in 1984.  If this photograph was given by Lange to Seema Aissen before her marriage in 1942, which seems likely, it would rank among the earliest prints of this image to appear at auction.