Mail boxes in Bell County, Texas

Shot in 1937 as part of Dorothea Lange’s ongoing work with the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Mail boxes in Bell County, Texas depicts five mailboxes, three of which were no longer in use by the time this photograph was taken. Those decommissioned boxes represent the tenant farmers who were gradually being replaced by tractor farming. Committed to shining a light on the state of poor and displaced farming families, Lange dedicated over five years to documenting the lives of migrant workers in rural America. While striving to portray these lives accurately and objectively, most of Lange’s photographs—including Mail boxes—are steeped in emotion, going on to become symbols of rural society during the Great Depression.