Affordable Luxury Log Home, Priest River Peninsula, Bonner County, Idaho (Final Sale)

Already pushing boundaries as a female portrait photographer, Dorothea Lange left a comfortable life in San Francisco to work for the FSA and document the migrant experience. She was motivated to make work that would inspire change in the country, and her work did often spark federal aid or intervention for those in need. As always, with this piece Lange ably fulfills her duty to document a time and place for the wide-ranging FSA project, but she leaves us with an image that’s ripe with narrative and contains the kind of detail that makes it an homage to the practice of photography itself.

At first glance, one might simply see a picture of a derelict house, a shack, really, in a desolate landscape. That is what it is, after all, but wait! Lange’s knack for framing images draws you in. Stay just a bit longer and everywhere your eye goes, there is visual interest, texture, and angles. The photo’s role as both a document and an aesthetic exercise give way to a story about the determination and resilience of human nature, and our ability to find, or create, the comforts of home in any circumstance.