[Though] Dorothea Lange's genius for seeing with a camera is what makes her important in the world and also intensifies the reader's interest in her, it is not that genius in itself which makes her a good subject for a biography. For that purpose, it matters much more that she talks well about herself and her work. Unlike many artists, she does not cover her traces as a creator. Reading [Milton Meltzer's Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life], one does not just contemplate the end result of her striving to make images that, to her mind, are beautiful only if they are true; one can follow her as she strives, because in the book she talks intelligently about this process, in letters and notebooks, through the memories of friends and disciples, from tape in an extensive oral history interview made when she was sixty-five, five years before her death...