George Lange is something of a Forrest Gump when it comes to how many big names and significant moments he's been close to. He’s photographed so many icons, and viewing the photographs framed in his Garfield studio feels like a crash course on the half-century of pop culture. There's Kate Spade doing her nails, Warhol at the Factory, Kobe Bryant at a writing desk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs before they were old, and the cast of some show called Friends.
But when we sit down, Lange gestures dismissively toward the prints.
“What I’m most excited about is the next photo I am going to take,” says Lange.
Lange is affable, quick-witted, and ambitious. He carries himself with an enthusiasm that betrays his 67 years, wearing a Golf Wang ball cap backwards as he leapfrogs from one anecdote to another.
The Squirrel Hill native is glad to call Pittsburgh home again. When he left to attend art school in the 1970s he never thought he’d return, but Pittsburgh has a way of pulling its people back into its orbit, and so it is with Lange.
Upon returning in 2019, Lange gained some perspective on what's driven him as a photographer all these years. These insights inspired Lange to put together a book of his photographs. He’s titled it Picturing Joy, and it’ll be out in the fall.
Lange might be looking back at his career, but he's not resting on his laurels. In fact, he has been working with a fervor. And right now Lange feels he's making the best work of his life.
In the past year, he's worked on campaigns with the Richard King Mellon Foundation and with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The photos from that campaign are currently featured on the Symphony’s posters outside of Heinz Hall and all over town.
Pittsburgh roots
Lange grew up in a tight-knit community on Inverness Avenue in Squirrel Hill. His family, like everyone they knew, had Eastern European roots, and Lange rarely strayed further than the Irene Kaufman Center. “Pittsburgh was all I knew, particularly Squirrel Hill, and especially that street,” said Lange.
When Lange was 7, his father gifted him a box camera and helped him set up a darkroom in the basement. He took to photography with glee. He started taking pictures of everything around him — family, friends, trees, snowmen — and his passion for photography only grew from there.
In high school, Lange shot photos for the Taylor Allderdice High School newspaper and yearbook, which, he fondly recalls, gave him an excuse to photograph people he would have been too afraid to ask otherwise.
In the 1970s Lange ventured out of Pittsburgh for the Rhode Island School of Design with big ambitions. After graduating he went to New York, determined to make it in the booming magazine world.
He’d ride the elevator up to the top floor of Conde Nast, and go desk to desk, down each floor from Vogue to GQ to Self to Glamour, and he wouldn't leave until he had an assignment. He worked hard, apprenticed with Annie Leibovitz, and with each shoot, Lange worked to develop a distinct voice as an artist.
The photos
A George Lange photo is a vibrant testimony to individuality, to joy, and to life. In his magazine portraits, Lange envisioned larger-than-life moments that live up to the fictions we believe about celebrity. The photos are campy, hilarious, and distinctly joyous. Despite the often contrived nature of magazine shoots, the joy in Lange's photos feels true.
When Lange did a shoot with Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Lange covered a tablecloth with rice and asked Nobu to lay there and look like he was asleep. In the photo, the famed restaurateur is wearing a slight grin. He’s surrounded by elegant plates of food and a gorgeous fish, two giant crabs resting on his chest.
Lange has always admired the work of Duane Michals, the great McKeesport-born artist. When Pittsburgh City Paper spoke to Michals over the phone, he made it clear that the admiration is mutual. “He has energy, and imagination, and he has the ability to make things happen,” said Michals. “He's not a bullshitter.”
Lange’s photography comes from a place of love, and so it comes as no surprise that, since becoming a father, he’s incessantly photographed his family. His family photos feel more tender than his commercial work, but all his photos are connected in the way they make joy a central part of the process.
He makes friends feel like celebrities, and celebrities feel like friends.
Lange says no matter who he’s shooting, “It’s all about the experience we share.”
After focusing for years on editorial work, Lange shifted gears and worked in branding for a number of big companies, among them TLC. In 2014, he became an artist-in-residence for Instagram and Facebook’s in-house creative agency.
Family
Family is really important for Lange. He says that his two sons, Asher and Jackson, and his wife, Stephanie, allow him to feel the most human. “My creative work is an expression of the life that I get to live with my family and my community,” says Lange.
It was ultimately family that brought Lange back to Pittsburgh. Lange’s mother Aline never left the house on Inverness Avenue, and as her health began to decline in 2018, Lange began visiting Pittsburgh to be with her. Lange feels fortunate that he got to share those last months with her.
“My mother lived a wonderful life,” says Lange. “She got great joy from everything Pittsburgh had to offer right up until the very end.”
After she passed away, Lange and Stephanie put the house on the market, but it didn't seem to be selling. And eventually, they decided to move back from Boulder, Colo.
Lange says that it was a leap of faith. “I had never planned to move back but, when we got here, I was so happy we did.” says Lange. “Pittsburgh has been generous and supportive and the perfect place to raise my kids.”
The book
After boomeranging back to Pittsburgh, Lange reconnected to a very specific feeling of joy that he’d felt throughout his childhood. This insight shifted his understanding of his photography.“When I began to look back at what I do, I realized that I've been trying to recreate that feeling of joy every day and in everything that I do, including taking photographs,” says Lange.
His book Picturing Joy was born out of this new perspective. Lange and his team gathered photos he’d shot throughout his life, mixing joyous family snapshots with spectacular works he did for editorials and branding departments.
The book he’s made feels like a celebration. Picturing Joy is smaller and more approachable than a coffee table book. It spans Lange’s entire career, from RISD until now, but he insists that the book isn't about him and it isn’t even about his subjects. “It's a book about joy,” he repeats.
Picturing Joy will be published in October this year. Lange hopes that readers will say, “Oh, I know that feeling.” His goal is for the book to help people discover and embrace the joy in their lives.
The Symphony
The photos that Lange made with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra are exemplary of his style — dynamic, playful, and engaging.When Lange got the opportunity to work with the Symphony, he knew it would be a challenge to make out-of-the-box, George Lange pictures with the musicians. But that's exactly the type of riddle for which he lives.
“George blew us away!” said Julie Goetz, director of communications for the Symphony. It's not easy to convey the intimacy and passion of the Symphony’s musicians and conductors in a photograph. But, Goetz says, “George understood this immediately.”
For Lange, the photos he made with the symphony carry some extra weight. “My mom loved the symphony,” he says. “When I go to the symphony I think of my mom.”
Lange says that when he saw his pictures outside of Heinz Hall and on the banners, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, my mom would love this.”
Picturing Joy: Stories of Connection by George Lange. georgelange.com/book
