Portraits of Women: A.L. "Whitney" Schafer Vs. Dorothea Lange

th Great Recession era photographers, both specialize in portraits, and their most common subjects? Women. Yet the way in which they are expressed, could not possibly be more different!

A.L. "Whitney" Schafer was a Salt Lake City-born 1930s and '40s Hollywood photographer, his subjects staged, sexualized, glamorous actresses and singers of the era. Dorothea Lange, a humanist, and a household name in Depression & Recession era photography in spite of the struggles that came with her gender at the time.

These fundamental aspects, their subjects, their genders, and their time, reflect and contrast one another's images.

On the left is a portrait of actress Doris Nolan by A.L. Schafer, the image is is staged, complete with flattering lighting, a blank background to make the subject the only object of focus, she is made-up, clean, and confident. She is deliberately made to look sexually attractive by the alluring look on her face and (for the era) revealing clothing.

On the right is Dorothea Lange's most famous photograph, "Migrant Mother", and she has very little staging. The anonymous subject has no dressings and trappings that Hollywood indulges, she is simply herself, and her struggle. Her young children, faces buried into her back, add further context to the images.

One image of glamor, the other of poverty, both taken within the same decade, both of women, one taken by a man, and the other by a woman. Schafer's exhibiting and epitomizing what was meant for the male gaze, defining the femininity of the era with the images he took of actresses. Lange's is meant to show the grim reality of Depression era poverty through the eyes of womanhood and motherhood. The former for public enjoyment, the latter for public confrontation.

However, both did express activism through their work.

Dorothea Lange frequently took images of not only people in poverty, but all people, not just one ethnicity, and not always in a tragic light. She strived to capture images of the country as it was, not as it was popularly portrayed, not shining cities and the nuclear caucasian family, but everyone.

A.L. Schafer on the other hand was highly anti-censorship. In his image "Thou Shall Not" he included every single image aspect that was banned from movie posters by an industry guideline called the Hays Movie Censorship Code. His photography, perhaps inadvertently, helped progress the front of women's liberation by encouraging them to be attractive if they so chose, not just for men, but for themselves.

Diverse in reason and expression, but both extremely impactful on their time.

Works Cited:

Aenigma Images. (2020, May 25). A L "Whitey" Schafer. aenigma. https://www.aenigma-images.com/2017/04/a-l-whitey-schafer/.

Huffpost. (2017, December 7). Happy Birthday Dorothea Lange! HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dorothea-lange-birthday-migrant-mother-photographer-118_n_3333741.

Marshall, C. (2019, September 24). "Thou Shalt Not": A 1940 Photo Satirically Mocks Every Vice & Sin Censored by the Hays Movie Censorship Code. Open Culture. https://www.openculture.com/2019/09/thou-shalt-not.html.

Staff, E. E. (2020, July 2). Dorothea Lange - Words & Pictures. Exibart Street. https://www.exibartstreet.com/news/dorothea-lange-words-pictures/.