Lange's caption written on the reverse of this photograph's mount reads: 'The face and the Environment of a Mexican-American. He works in the fields of Southern Arizona, picking cotton. Please consider this series of 5 photographs as one picture. They should be viewed and hung in this sequence.' Underneath is Lange's installation diagram; her circled number 5 indicates this image is the fifth of this series taken in the cotton fields of Eloy, Arizona.

The photographs in Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection were in the photographer’s collection at the time of her death and thenceforth passed to her descendants. The images represent the entirety of Lange’s career as one of the foremost documentary photographers of the 20th century, from work made before her engagement with the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration, in the 1930s, to the travel photography that absorbed her in her final years, as well as more personal images of her family. Each print bears a Family Collection stamp on the reverse.