After Church, Toquerville, Utah

> Dorothea Lange suffered health problems in the late 1940s, but she wanted to travel again and be part of the current documentary effort. Since the federal government was no longer funding such projects, this meant working for the thriving picture magazines. Lange proposed to *Life* that she and Ansel Adams do a project in Utah. They would travel with her son Daniel, who would write text for the article, and her husband, who had a continuing interest in the survival of utopian communities. Their purpose was to record the landscape ([2000.52.2](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/128375), [2000.43.9](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/129307), [2000.50.28](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/128370)), built environment, and inhabitants of three towns in southwestern Utah settled in the mid-nineteenth century by Mormons. The grandchildren of some of these pioneers were Lange's subjects during her visit to Gunlock, Toquerville, and St. George in 1953 ([2000.50.32](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/128378)). > > A sense of stability is communicated by Lange's compositions from the village of Toquerville. In his text for *Life,* Daniel portrayed this town as a well-preserved part of the past, noting that it did not have "a bank or a movie house, a motel or a café." Old poplar trees lined the broad streets; the well-crafted stone and adobe houses were still livable. It appeared to be a place that held little attraction for the young but one in which the older inhabitants put their trust in what he called their "lofty, lonely faith." Adapted from Judith Keller, *Dorothea Lange,* In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002), p. 64. © 2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.