Though born in Oregon, Consuelo Kanaga spent most of her youth in San Francisco. From 1915 to 1922, Kanaga worked for both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Daily News as a photojournalist. After joining the California Camera Club in 1918, Kanaga decided to become a professional photographer and by 1922 had moved to New York to pursue her interests. Some of her closest friends at that time included Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston with whom she became one of the founding members of Group f/64.
By 1936, Kanaga, along with many of her photographic peers, began working for the Works Project Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. Her work initially focused on portraiture, though that changed in 1938 when Kanaga took pictures of a major strike riot in San Francisco - of which she was also a participant. With only a few photographs she managed to convey the violence between the police and the laborers caught up in the turmoil. It was following this incident that she decided to switch her focus from portraiture to a more socially conscious photography. In later years, she continued this cause by photographing the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
From a series on the South, She is a Tree of Life to Them is one of Consuelo Kanaga's most recognized photographic images, and was included in the landmark exhibition, "The Family of Man," organized by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art (1955).
