Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the forced relocation of Japanese and Japanese American citizens are part of a Library of Congress’ online exhibit “Women Come to the Front.”

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) had early interest in photography. She worked with Arnold Genthe, and had her own photography studio in San Francisco. She was part of the West Coast Bohemian group of photographers, and later married — and divorced — famed artist Maynard Dixon.

In the 1930s she was involved with the migrant farm workers program of the California Emergency Relief Administration, and later began photographic assignments for the U.S. governments Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, as well as the War Relocation Authority, from which these photographs are drawn.

Lange, the Library of Congress wrote:

... documented the change on the homefront, especially among ethnic groups and workers uprooted by the war. Three months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the relocation of Japanese-Americans into armed camps in the West. Soon after, the War Relocation Authority hired Lange to photograph Japanese neighborhoods, processing centers, and camp facilities.

Lange’s earlier work documenting displaced farm families and migrant workers during the Great Depression did not prepare her for the disturbing racial and civil rights issues raised by the Japanese internment. Lange quickly found herself at odds with her employer and her subjects’ persecutors, the United States government.

To capture the spirit of the camps, Lange created images that frequently juxtapose signs of human courage and dignity with physical evidence of the indignities of incarceration. Not surprisingly, many of Lange’s photographs were censored by the federal government, itself conflicted by the existence of the camps.

The true impact of Lange’s work was not felt until 1972, when the Whitney Museum incorporated twenty-seven of her photographs into Executive Order 9066, an exhibit about the Japanese internment. New York Times critic A.D. Coleman called Lange’s photographs “documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime.”