From 27 October 2023 to 4 February 2024 the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa pays homage to a woman whose "gaze" made the history of this art form, marking, in fact, the birth of documentary photography: Dorothea Lange.

Curated by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi , in collaboration with CAMERA - Italian Center for Photography of Turin , the exhibition Dorothea Lange. The Other America presents the work of the famous American photographer, co-founder in 1952 of Aperture, the most authoritative photographic magazine in the world, and the first woman photographer to whom the MoMa dedicated a retrospective in 1965, just a few months before her death.

Approximately 200 shots retrace Lange's career, examining in particular the production of the 1930s and 1940s during which the photographer recounts, with her very particular and incisive style, themes that are still very current today such as the climate crisis, migration, discrimination which marked the years of the American Great Depression. With his dry language and at the same time nourished by cultured modernist suggestions, Lange gives us works "out of time" that solicit reflections and stimulate debate on our present. The fulcrum - and novelty - of the exhibition will be a special insight into the birth of the famous and iconic Migrant Mother, following an exhibition itinerary of great charm but also of strong informative and educational value: the presentation of the sequence of five shots taken by Lange to find the photo perfect, and the other powerful images of migrants created in that camp, will allow the public to understand the process through which an icon is born.

Through a wide selection of works from different collections that preserve the work of Dorothea Lange (including in particular the Library of Congress in Washington, the US National Archives), the exhibition allows us to retrace the golden period of her career of the photographer from the 1930s to the Second World War, also presenting previous and subsequent shots - such as the series never before exhibited in Italy dedicated to the detention camps for Japanese-American citizens segregated following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 - to give into account the variety and depth of her research, always aimed at providing a sincere and participatory portrait of the world around her.