Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) - Yaqui cotton picker

Yaqui cotton picker, Cortaro Farms, Pinal County, Arizona, November 1940. Exhibition print from Dorothea Lange - Photographs, Galerie Bilderwelt, Berlin 1998 Dorothea Lange photographed agricultural operations at Cortaro Farms, an industrialized farming area in Pinal County, north of Tucson, Arizona, in November 1940. Her documentation captured migratory cotton pickers, including day-workers hauled from Tucson and Yaqui Indian workers employed year-round for irrigation, highlighting the labor dynamics of the region's cotton industry during that period. Dorothea Lange is a pioneering American documentary photographer whose work is deeply intertwined with the social and economic history of California during the 20th century. Born in New Jersey in 1895, she moved to California in 1918 and initially established a successful portrait studio in San Francisco, where she documented the city's affluent society. During the Great Depression, Lange shifted her focus to social documentary photography, working for the Resettlement Administration and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her most famous work, Migrant Mother (1936), was taken in Nipomo, California, and became an iconic image of the era's hardship. She extensively documented migrant workers, agricultural laborers, and the displaced poor throughout the state, including areas like Kern County, the Salinas Valley, and Imperial Valley.

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