Human Erosion in California (Migrant Mother) (detail), Dorothea Lange, 1936. Gelatin silver print. Getty Museum
Written from Images: Literature Inspired by Dorothea Lange
GETTY CENTER
Harold M. Williams Auditorium
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Join contemporary poet Tess Taylor and author Jasmin Darznik as they discuss and read from their recent works inspired by the life and work of New Deal photographer Dorothea Lange. Moderated by art historian Dr. Sally Stein.
The talk is followed by a book signing of The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik; Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange by Tess Taylor; and Migrant Mother, Migrant Gender: Reconsidering Dorothea Lange’s Iconic Portrait of Maternity by Dr. Sally Stein, which will be available for purchase.
About the Speakers
Jasmin Darznik is the New York Times bestselling author of The Bohemians, a novel that imagines the friendship between photographer Dorothea Lange and her Chinese American assistant in 1920s San Francisco. Her debut novel, Song of a Captive Bird, was a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” book and a Los Angeles Times bestseller. She is also the author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life. Her books have been published in 17 countries and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among others.
Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Misremembered World, The Forage House, and Work & Days. In spring 2020 she published two books of poems: Last West, part of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, at the Museum of Modern Art, and Rift Zone, from Red Hen Press, hailed as “brilliant” in the Los Angeles Times and named one of the best books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. Taylor has served as an on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s "All Things Considered" for over a decade. She is currently on faculty at Ashland University’s Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program.
Dr. Sally Stein, professor emerita, department of art history, UC Irvine, is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles who researches and writes about photography and its relation to broader questions of culture and society. The interrelated topics she most often engages concern the multiple effects of documentary imagery, the politics of gender, and the status and meaning of black-and-white and color imagery on our perceptions, beliefs, and even actions as consumers and citizens. Her most recent publication is the monograph Migrant Mother, Migrant Gender: Reconsidering Dorothea Lange’s Iconic Portrait of Maternity (London: MACK, 2020).