Lange’s primary interest in the South was in documenting the economic relations that both shaped and were shaped by the Jim Crow system. Her photographs captured every aspect of the southern agricultural economy, describing in detail the hiring systems, crop liens and debt servitude system, and abysmal wages through which white planters exploited Black workers. Her work focused on three primary crops — cotton, tobacco, and turpentine — recording every step in the process from start to finish, revealing them not simply as commodities but as products of human labor that were largely hidden from view.