This photograph is from the series of images Lange made alongside Ansel Adams in Utah for a joint picture essay published in LIFE magazine in the fall of 1954. Entitled ‘Three Mormon Towns,’ the photographs were accompanied by text by Lange's son, Daniel Dixon. While Adams and Lange pursued the project in their own characteristic styles, Adams focusing on the land and Lange on people, Lange produced a number of strong images of the impressive landscape around the three towns they photographed: Gunlock, Toquerville, and St. George. Within the article, the present image by Lange is reproduced on a page spread with the heading Gunlock Enjoys the Lord’s Day, and bears the caption, ‘The immanence of God.’
The photographs in Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection were in the photographer’s collection at the time of her death and thenceforth passed to her descendants. The images represent the entirety of Lange’s career as one of the foremost documentary photographers of the 20th century, from work made before her engagement with the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration, in the 1930s, to the travel photography that absorbed her in her final years, as well as more personal images of her family. Each print bears a Family Collection stamp on the reverse.