Otto Hagel (1909- 1973) photographed
farmworkers, dockworkers and other victims of the depression for
Time, Life, Fortune and other magazines. He
and his wife Hansel Meith were part of the school of socially conscious
documentary photo-journalists that included Dorothea Lange, Imogene
Cunningham, Peter Stackpole and Robert Capa. Unlike many others,
they began their work in California as migrant farm workers themselves.
Hagel's photographs of waterfront workers are the
base of two extraordinary books published by the west coast longshoremen's
union: Men and Ships: A Pictorial of the Maritime Industry
(1937); and Men and Machines: A Story About Longshoring on the
West Coast Waterfront (1963).
Hagel and Meith bought a working ranch in Santa
Rosa California in 1941 that provided them with a livelihood and
also served as a gathering place for friends--photographers artists
and writers --who shared their commitment to improving conditions
for workers. Hagel and Mieth photographed the inside of the Heart
Mountain Japanese American internment camp for LIFE in 1943, but
the photographs were never published, and they were blacklisted
in the 1950s for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American
Activities Committee.
Hagel left an enduring body of work, including
powerful images of working people that span four decades. We are
currently developing a web exhibit of this work in collaboration
with the ILWU, one of the unions he worked closely with throughout
his life. Here we present a small sample.
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