In the early 1930s Dorothea Lange operated her own portrait studio in San Francisco catering to the city’s wealthier residents. As economic conditions worsened around her, and she saw growing numbers of newly unemployed people, she took to the street, camera in hand, to explore the situation. She made a series of photographs at demonstrations during this time that capture an intensity born of the dire seriousness of the growing Depression. It is images such as this one, of workers during the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, that marked the beginning of a photographic career characterized by empathy and a need to document the issues of her day.