Lange’s homecoming

If you don’t know the name Dorothea Lange, you know her pictures -- iconic, black-and-white photographs of the destitute and desperate during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.

Less known are her photographs from the 1950s and early 1960s, when Lange focused her lens on city life, her family and travels to Vietnam and Indonesia. It is these images that are on display at Rose Gallery in Santa Monica.

The show, which features 58 prints, amply demonstrates Lange’s eye for aesthetic simplicity and emotional depth -- her ability to capture a person’s essence in the posture and expression. While some are recognizable classics, at least half have never before been exhibited; many are of her sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

“Everyone thinks of Dorothea as sort of this amazing woman who photographed during the Depression, but her work continued afterward. It became something else and about something else,” said Rose Gallery owner Rose Shoshana. “In the Depression, the work she was doing was very much to bring to light people’s suffering out in the West. She had left her two children when she was a young woman to go out in the field and take those pictures.... I think part of her coming back to focusing on her family was her way of coming home and putting the family first.”

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Dorothea Lange exhibition, Rose Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Gallery G5, Santa Monica. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ends June 26. (310) 264-8440.