Hansel Mieth (1909-1998) and Otto Hagel (1909-1973) were both born in Germany but immigrated to the United States in 1930 and 1928 respectively. Arriving in the midst of the Great Depression, the couple ended up finding work as farm laborers in rural California, experiencing firsthand the dismal living conditions of the migrant worker. Hagel and Mieth bought a used camera and started documenting the lives of the agricultural workers around them. Their photographs of cotton pickers and their families, of shanty towns (“Hoovervilles”) around Sacramento, and of waterfront workers in San Francisco, established Mieth and Hagel as socially conscious documentary photographers.

In 1937, Mieth accepted a position as LIFE magazine staff photographer, while Hagel continued to work as a freelancer for publications such as Time, LIFE, and Fortune, as well as producing photographs for two books published by the West Coast longshoremen’s union. Both Hagel and Mieth continued to capture images of America’s working poor and bring attention to civil liberties and labor struggles. In 1943, on assignment for LIFE magazine, Hagel and Mieth photographed Heart Mountain Japanese American internment camp, although these images were never published by the magazine. In the 1950s, like many politically active individuals, they were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) but refused to testify against friends in the labor movement and were blacklisted as a result. Mieth lost her job with LIFE and work became scarce. The couple, who officially married in 1940, retired to a working ranch they had bought in Santa Rosa. Some of their later works document civil rights marches, the work of longshoremen in San Francisco, and the lives of the Pomo Indians of Northern California.