Hansel Mieth (1909–1998) was a German-born photojournalist who worked on the staff of LIFE magazine. She was best known for her social commentary photography, which recorded the lives of working class Americans in the 1930s and 1940s.

Biography

She was born Johanna Mieth in Oppelsbohm, Germany, one of three daughters of a strict, religious family. She ran away from home at the age of 15 and did factory work before emigrating to the United States in 1930 to join her lover and fellow photographer Otto Hagel (1909–1973). The couple found themselves in the midst of the Great Depression and worked as migrant farm labourers for several years. During that time they began to photograph the brutal working conditions and suffering they saw around them, after acquiring a second-hand Leica camera. In San Francisco, Sacramento, and in the rural towns they worked in, they photographed the bitter labour strikes and the working homeless. They were involved with the San Francisco Film and Photo League during the early 1930s. They also became acquainted with working photographers and began to sell their own photographs to magazines.

In 1937 Mieth joined the staff of LIFE magazine (only the second woman photographer to do so), and she and Otto (whom she married in 1940

References

Further reading

  • Mieth, Hansel "On the Life and Work of Otto Hagel and Hansel Mieth as Narrated by Hansel Mieth". Left Curve no. 13 . 1988
  • Flamiano, Dolores. "Meaning Memory and Misogyny: Life Photographer's Hansel Mieth's Monkey Portrait" Afterimage, Sept/Oct. 2005 p22
  • Flamiano, Dolores. "Women, Workers, and Race in LIFE Magazine - Hansel Mieth's Reform Photojournalism, 1934-1955", Routledge 2016
  • Leshne, Carla. "The Film & Photo League of San Francisco", Film History: An International Journal - Volume 18, Number 4, 2006, pp. 361–373
  • Street, Richard Steven.Photographing Farmworkers in California Stanford University Press, 2004
  • Zandy, Janet. Unfinished Stories: The Narrative Photography of Hansel Mieth and Marion Palfi 2013.
  • Hansel Mieth Prize awarded annually for published or unpublished feature in German or German translation