-- Premieres on KQED Public Television 9 on Sunday, July 24 at 5:30pm –
“I suppose if one of my children were here discussing their relationship to me they would be able to think of things that were quite horrifying, dreadful, that I did, that I was…”
- Dorothea Lange from her oral history
June 28, 2011 San Francisco, CA --- They were a creative supercouple, two giants of the American art world: photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and painter of the Southwest Maynard Dixon (1875-1946). But for their children, these formidable parents cast a heavy shadow. Their eldest son, Daniel Rhoades Dixon, learns that his birthright comes with gifts and curses in the newest film in KQED’s documentary film series Truly CA. Thomas Ropelewski’s moving Child of Giants: My Journey with Maynard Dixon & Dorothea Lange, premieres on Sunday, July 24 at 5:30pm on KQED Public Television 9.
While Lange and Dixon were in the field creating some of the most indelible images of all time – including Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), perhaps the most iconic American photographic image of the 20th Century – Daniel and his younger brother John, beginning at the ages of seven and four, were placed in a series of foster homes, never knowing when they might see their parents again. Daniel became a troubled teenage rebel, stealing and selling his mother’s cameras and his father’s artwork, and living homeless on the streets of Oakland, California. Against all odds, he finally came to a surprising reconciliation with his parents’ lives and legacies.
While telling the story of two of this country's most original and maverick artists from a uniquely personal perspective, Child of Giants features rare and never-before-seen photographs from the private collection of members of the Dixon-Lange family and from the Oakland Museum of California’s Dorothea Lange Archive.
Child of Giants also includes candid commentary from many members of Dixon and Lange’s extended family, including screenwriter Leslie Dixon (Mrs. Doubtfire, Hairspray), as well as renowned Bay Area photographers Rondal Partridge and Christina Gardner, both of whom recount tales of being in the field with Dorothea Lange during some of her most significant assignments.