Question 1

True or false: Lange contracted polio as a child, which left her with a permanent limp.

Accepted Answer

True. At age seven, polio weakened her right leg and caused a lifelong limp. She later said it gave her empathy for the marginalized.

Question 2

True or false: Lange's first major commission was for Vogue magazine in New York City.

Accepted Answer

False. Her first major break was opening a portrait studio in San Francisco. Vogue hired her later, but not first—she started with society portraits.

Question 3

True or false: She photographed the Dust Bowl while traveling in a custom-built station wagon.

Accepted Answer

True. Lange traveled the Dust Bowl in a 1932 Ford station wagon rigged with a darkroom. She often slept in it during assignments.

Question 4

True or false: Dorothea Lange's famous 'Migrant Mother' photo was staged with paid actors.

Accepted Answer

False. The photo was candid, capturing Florence Owens Thompson and her children at a pea-pickers camp. Lange didn't pay or direct them.

Question 5

True or false: Lange destroyed all her negatives of Japanese American internment camps after World War II.

Accepted Answer

False. She didn't destroy them—the Army impounded most. Many were later rediscovered and released in the 2000s at the National Archives.

Question 6

True or false: The F.B.I. once investigated Lange for her photographs of Japanese American internment.

Accepted Answer

True. The U.S. Army impounded many of her internment camp photos. The F.B.I. investigated her for failing to depict the camps positively.

Question 7

True or false: She was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography.

Accepted Answer

True. In 1941, Lange won the Guggenheim Fellowship, making her the first female photographer honored. She used it to document rural America.

Question 8

True or false: Lange's photographs were used to help pass the Social Security Act in 1935.

Accepted Answer

False. Her work for the FSA influenced public opinion on rural poverty, but it wasn't directly used to pass Social Security—that bill passed earlier.

Dorothea Lange Trivia Questions