Lange trained as a photographer and settled in San Francisco, setting up a portrait studio in 1919; with the stock market crash of 1929 her business dwindled, so Lange began taking documentary photographs of the era; from 1935 Lange was employed by the United States Government Farm Security Administration (FSA), documenting the high levels of unemployment in rural California; during the second world war Lange was again employed by the government to record the relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans; Lange disagreed with the policy and was dismissed, her photographs impounded; after the war Lange taught at the California School of Fine Arts, travelling the world photographing for Life magazine.