NIPOMO

Margaret Hayes is an FSA documentary photographer who in 1936 took what became the most recognized image of the Great Depression: a woman and three children at a pea-pickers camp in Nipomo, California. When she returns to the camp in 1939, she finds the woman still there, and learns that the caption she wrote was wrong. The woman's husband did not leave for work in another county. He stayed in Dalhart, Texas, and died on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935. He was not killed by the storm. He was killed for what he was trying to do the following day. The film follows Margaret's investigation from the California camps to the Texas Panhandle and back: what she finds, what it costs, and what she finally decides to do with the camera.