Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange

Acclaimed poet Tess Taylor responds to Dorothea Lange’s legacy and their shared interest in their home state of California.

In conjunction with the forthcoming book and exhibition ‘Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures’, the acclaimed American poet Tess Taylor has written a poem that responds to Lange’s legacy and their shared interest in their home state of California. Accompanied by reproductions of several of Lange’s photographs and related ephemera, the poem includes quotes from Lange’s notebooks, lyrics from contemporary ‘roadsongs’, as Taylor calls them, and bits of interviews and other found text. Taylor explores mass migration, climate change and homelessness, and features the stories of the people impacted by these crises, in keeping with Lange’s compassionate and richly textured depictions of the human experience