Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
BOOM YEARS FOR POSTCARDS
Susie and Lula's heyday--the late 1920s and early 1930s--was also a boom time for postcards in the U.S. The art of photography had recently come of age and itinerant photographers rushed to capture the last vestiges of the Old West. Many sought the extreme landscapes of the Coachella Valley, among them Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Edward Curtis. Dorothea Lange photographed Coachella Valley fieldworkers in 1935 and may have crossed paths with Susie and Lula. It's also likely the pair met Stephen Willard and Burton Frasher (the largest producer of postcards in the West), who traveled through the sparsely-populated eastern Coachella Valley in the mid-teens through 1950s.
While these better-known photographers took a commercial stance, Susie and Lula had an intimate insiders' acquaintance with the Aqueduct surveyors and crews, as well as the prospectors, cowboys and explorers.