Dorothea Lange was determined to be a photographer before she had a camera. Rather than follow her mother's wishes that she train as a school teacher, Lange apprenticed herself in a series of New York studios, including that of Arnold Genthe.

Larner's sculptural work uses the formal roots of modernism to question traditional notions of space and volume. In her early work, Larner examined issues of transformation and decay in a series of petri dish cultures that she also photographed.

Born in Albany, New York, Gertrude Lathrop came from a family of women artists with whom she shared a studio at home. Her mother, Ida, was a painter of landscape and still life, and her sister Dorothy was primarily a writer and illustrator of children's books.

Elizabeth Layton was born in 1909 in the small town of Wellsville, Kansas, whose population was 550. She did not begin drawing until 1977 when, at the age of sixty-eight, she took a drawing class at a local university.

Throughout her long career Blanche Lazzell remained open to new experiences and ideas. Her early work in Paris between 1912 and 1914 had introduced her to the more radical European movements.

Born in 1916 in New York City, Rebecca Lepkoff has made it the centerpiece of her long career in photography. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938 at the City College of New York, she participated in a National Youth Administration photography program from 1939 to 1941.