Dyanna Taylor had to look no farther than her own family to make a compelling film. After all, her grandmother’s photograph of Florence Thompson is seared into the American psyche as “Migrant Mother,” the Dust Bowl madonna enshrined by Dorothea Lange.
Less known was Lange’s husband, Paul Taylor, an economist devoted to studying farmworkers and, later, the impact of agribusiness. Ms. Taylor acknowledged that Lange was a much more charismatic and powerful personality than her gentle, quiet grandfather, but insists that none of Lange’s work would have happened without him.
“That cross-fertilization is fascinating to me,” said Ms. Taylor. “They had found a creative collaboration that is so rare in life. Paul Taylor went unseen forever. He was behind her, being her champion, but producing major work himself and she contributed to that.”
Ms. Taylor, an award-winning cinematographer, can finally tell that story in “Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning,” a documentary which will be broadcast Friday, August 29, on PBS as part of the American Masters series. The heart of the film comes from 22 hours of extraordinary footage shot by Lange’s teaching assistant Phil Greene that has been restored.
Her grandfather, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley, began studying Mexican laborers and their struggles in 1927. He later turned his attention to the impact of agribusinesses, which destroyed family farms and entire farming communities. His research formed a basis for the 1939 hearings conducted by the United States Senate’s La Follette Committee on civil liberties violations against farmworkers.
“That work was completely hidden,” she said. “I couldn’t raise money to do a film about Paul Taylor. But I could raise money to do a film about Dorothea Lange.”
Ms. Taylor, who was 14 when Lange died from esophageal cancer, had to get past her adolescent memories of their relationship to focus on serious scholarship and dispel the Lange myth.
“Dorothea did not act as a lone, brave woman out there, alone,” Ms. Taylor said. “She was in life. In real relationships. Interestingly enough, she was alone when she photographed ‘Migrant Mother,’ but for the rest of the work she was always with someone. She rarely worked alone.”
While everyone recognizes “Migrant Mother,” people don’t know much about the photographer behind the unforgettable portrait: That childhood polio had left her with a limp; that she was first married to the painter, Maynard Dixon; that she sent her children to be raised by others for periods of time so that she could work unencumbered.
What Ms. Taylor didn’t anticipate was discovering how little she, too, knew about her grandmother.
“There are moments when I’m sitting in the editing room staring at her and I’m thinking ‘Who is this woman? Isn’t she fascinating? Look at what she just said,’ and then I go, ‘Oh right,’” she said. “And I’m back at 12, 13 years old and under her stern gaze. A very interesting woman was revealed to me and one I wish I could have a conversation with now.”
She hopes people will appreciate the breadth of Lange’s work and not pigeonhole her as a just a Depression-era photographer. In fact, she said, she did very little in the Dust Bowl, compared with her later, remarkable images and her environmental work.
In 1958, in her later years, Lange accompanied her husband on two journeys to the Middle East, south Asia, Europe and South America. Ms. Taylor said that by the time she produced that material, she was working without a specific objective or deadline. It was from an artistic point of view, even though Lange had only called herself a “craftsman” and never an artist.
“There were two long trips,” Ms. Taylor explained. “She was accompanying Paul Taylor and what he had to do and thus she was forced to work through instinct and seeing, when she could. And the work is extraordinary as a result.”
At the very end of her life and as a result of those adventures, Lange finally relented: “I guess I’m an artist, you know, after all.”
Ms. Taylor thinks her grandfather would love the final film.
“Quietly, in his quiet Paul Taylor way, he’d be proud,” Ms. Taylor said. “Dorothea … I’m not so sure.”
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