Hansel Mieth fully dedicated her life to her profession. When photographing on site, Mieth and her crew would live among the issues in order to capture the most raw and telling images. Mieth once said "To be a good photographer you must feel what people feel when they're down." Her extreme commitment to battling social and political issues in the United States resulted in great contributions in documentary style films and photojournalism. Mieth achieved her primary goal of showing the world injustices through the lens of her camera.

In 1937 Meith was made executive editor at LIFE magazine, making her the second female photographer on staff. For this reason, Mieth felt a great deal of discrimination and restrictions against her work and creativity. She was given demeaning assignments, her work was often censored and in many cases the work she was assigned did not get published. Meith had originally been hesitant to take the job in the first place because of these reasons and potentially undermining her beliefs to work for corporate America. Although despite this, Meith was able to use LIFE as a platform to reach thousands of people and display to the strength of human spirit.