MADRID.- Fundación ICO presented the exhibition The Crucial Years, a large sample of the most representative work by documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, that is included in the Historical Exhibitions and Grand Masters programme of PHotoEspaña 2009.

The show features more than 140 images of the most emblematic works of the author of Migrant mother, performed in the 30’s and the 40’s. This is a complete review of photographs taken from projects for the Farm Security Administration, War Relocation Authority and urban scenes of American metropolis.

Dorothea Lange is a fundamental point of reference in documentary photography. Her images portray the protagonists of one of the most difficult eras in the history of the United States and are closely related to their daily lives. It was an era that led the way to a period of prosperity, the nineteen fifties.

Los años decisivos (The Crucial Years), produced by the Fundación ICO, offers nearly 140 photographs from a very important stage for Lange, the nineteen thirties and forties. From 1935 to 1944 she photographed Federal Government projects such as those of the Farm Security Administration and the War Relocation Authority. In the first, she documented the exodus of farmers and rural workers toward the West in search of work, and in the second, the evacuation and relocation in internment camps of Japanese Americans during World War II. In all of these settings, her photography stands out for its humanist nature and great empathy with those photographed. During those years she reached full maturity, learning how to frame her subjects in the midst of the masses and using New Vision resources to create powerful images, many of them of a great aesthetic beauty way beyond their documentary nature.

Works by Dorothea Lange (U.S.A. 1895-1965) are held in the collections of the MoMA, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum and the Oakland Museum, where her legacy is kept.

In previous PHE editions, the halls of the Museo Colecciones ICO, located on Zorrilla Street in Madrid, have hosted shows with unpublished photos by Man Ray and the photographic work of Sol Lewitt.