Explore Richmond, California/“It Was Never Like This Back Home”

Read About This Photograph by Dorothea Lange

Fortune magazine hired Dorothea Lange and her friend of many years, photographer Ansel Adams, to photograph 24 hours in the life of the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond, California, across the bay from San Francisco. Richmond saw rapid growth during World War II as Kaiser built 727 ships for the military. By 1944, the shipyard employed almost 100,000 workers. Since it was active around the clock in order to build ships as rapidly as possible, many businesses in Richmond stayed open 24 hours a day to meet the needs of off-shift defense workers.

The woman in the photograph was one of the many newcomers to town in the 1940s. She may have worked a swing or night shift and was taking an opportunity to dress up in her jewelry and evening furs for a special outing during her free time in the middle of a sunny day. Seen from a low vantage point, she stands proudly in front of a café. During the war, thousands of women joined the workforce for the first time, often earning the same wages paid to men—perhaps one reason for her happy and confident gaze.

This casual portrait does not reveal the racial tensions that troubled Richmond at that time. The town was undergoing a sudden enormous increase in its population of African American residents, many of whom had left the southern United States and its sharecropping system in search of better opportunities. They received equal pay, but the unions blocked them, the supervisors refused to promote them (and most female shipyard workers), and they were kept segregated in their jobs and housing.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• What can you say about the woman? How would you describe the expression on her face?
• How would you describe this woman’s life? What do you see that gives you clues about it?
• Why do you think she is wearing a dressy fur coat in the middle of a sunny day?
• Where was Lange standing when she took this photograph?
• Why do you think women were hired into the workforce of the 1940s?
• What do you think it felt like to go from working in the home to working in a wartime shipyard?

Artworks showing what a specific person looks like. A portrait may look a lot like a person or show idealized characteristics.