Over the course of the 1930s, Lange took several lengthy road trips on her FSA beat. Some of her most striking images depict sharecroppers in the Deep South. This photo depicts a migrant worker and former slave in Mississippi. The title Lange chose shows her sensitivity to America’s colonial past and the persistent struggle of former slaves, felt long after freedom had been granted.

Similar to much of Lange’s work, this image highlights her subject’s wrinkled face and gnarled hands—features she regularly emphasized to communicate human strife, as well as endurance, resilience, and strength. “Lange’s gaze…showed more mercy but avoided sentimentality by its emphasis on individual personality and complexity,” scholar Linda Gordon wrote of the photographer’s work in the American South in “Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits” (2009).



