It is one of the glories of Milton Meltzer's superb life of Lange ["Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life"], perhaps an unintended one (but more about unconscious art in a minute), that his innate reporting skill and honesty forbade him to gloss over the complexities and conflicts despite which his subject managed to become a legendary figure in recent American social history and even, to many critics and somewhat fewer photographers, a great photographer. There are other fortuitous reasons why it is a good book. Mr. Meltzer is a historian himself, with a special expertise on the Depression ("Brother, Can You Spare a Dime"), which produced a Dorothea Lange, and Government subsidy to the arts ("Violins and Shovels"), which enabled Lange to work effectively….

Lange was a great unconscious artist…. She had a clear understanding, and Mr. Meltzer reminds us of this simple fact, that subject matter, not technique...