Where is Dorothea Lange?

The New York Times seems to be doing Dorothea Lange all over again, but in color. (See below, NYT Magazine, July 2, 2023.) I don’t quite have the word for how much I dislike the new photograph, and how much I prefer the original black-and-white Lange photo of the migrant mother in Nipomo, California, (1936) with her kid’s heads turned away from the camera, as if they’re being protected by their mother. One is completely convince in the modesty, indirectness, and dignity of the image, as posed as it may be, to the shiny new duplicate (or rather, appropriation) taken of the mother and three children at home in Ninety-Six, South Carolina, (June, 2023) that reveals everything and pretty much nothing at the same time.

Privacy sometimes happens all by itself, as delicately woven as it may be, and sometimes privacy is posed for the purpose of presenting a shiny appropriation of an otherwise perfectly beautiful image, instead of over-trying to ‘get the story’ and then pulling it up by its roots to show us all how truly pathetic we all are.

I don’t have the right word for how much I detest the new NYT photo. The right word is close but also very far away. Sometimes I think it’s right here, right in front of me like a picture, and then a whole string of words or two strings of them that might make a whole utterance worthy of Beckett, or somebody even like me.

Robert Lowell, poet, had a heart attack at the age of 60 in the backseat of a taxi-cab in Manhattan on September 12, 1977. No pictures were taken that I know of. Sudden death followed by respectful decorum, a rapid-trigger release and an even longer ride to the emergency room.

from The New York Times Magazine, July 2, 2023.