To justify the need for New Deal projects, the government employed photographers to document the suffering of those affected, producing some of the most iconic photographs of the Great Depression.
During the 1930s, America went through one of its greatest challenges: the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to relieve the dire economic situation with his New Deal programs. To justify the need for those projects, the government employed photographers to document the suffering of those affected and publish the pictures. Their efforts produced some of the most iconic photographs of the Great Depression—and all of American history.
Photos showed ‘the city people what it’s like to live on the farm.’
The Resettlement Administration, later replaced by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), was created as part of the New Deal to build relief camps and offer loans and relocation assistance to farmers impacted by the Depression and the Dust Bowl, which wreaked havoc on the Great Plains. But the programs weren’t cheap and required significant government funding to maintain.
Former Roosevelt advisor Rexford Tugwell headed up the department and soon hired Columbia University professor Roy Stryker as Chief of the Historical Section in the Division of Information. Stryker also led the agency’s Photographic Unit.
Stryker was tasked with documenting the need for government assistance by taking photographs of rural farmers at work and at home in their small-town communities, of migrants looking for work and of the effects of the Great Depression on everyday life in rural America. “Show the city people what it’s like to live on the farm,” Tugwell reportedly told Stryker.
Farm Security Administration/The Library of Congress
‘Fleeing a Dust Storm,’ photographed by Arthur Rothstein.
The FSA photographs galvanized Americans into action.
Stryker created a team of “documentary photographers.” They didn’t want to just churn out propaganda photos of bread lines, vacant farmhouses and barefoot children caked with dust. They also wanted to capture the raw emotion behind the drudgery and bring empathy to the suffering of ordinary Americans.
The first photographer Stryker chose for his team was Arthur Rothstein. During his five years with the FSA, his most noteworthy contribution may have been, “Fleeing a Dust Storm,” a (supposedly posed) photo of an Oklahoma homesteader and his two young sons trudging through swirling layers of dust toward a dilapidated shack.
Farm Security Administration/The Library of Congress
‘Migrant Mother,’ photographed by Dorothea Lange.
New Jersey-born portrait photographer Dorothea Lange also worked for the FSA. She took many photographs of poverty-stricken families in squatter camps but was best known for a series of photographs of Florence Owens Thompson, a 32-year-old mother living in a camp of stranded pea pickers.
One photograph of Thompson, “Migrant Mother,” became a defining symbol of the Great Depression. The pictures’ publication incited an emergency food delivery to the pea picker’s camp, although Thompson and her family had reportedly moved on before help arrived.
Photographer Walker Evans also joined the FSA team. He’s well-known for his photo of Allie Mae Burroughs, a sharecropper’s wife and mother of four. He’s also known for photographing images of shop windows, architecture and items that portrayed the resourcefulness of Depression-era Americans.
Russell Lee: known for capturing moments of hope and joy among poor migrants.
Gordon Parks: a black photographer who experienced rampant bigotry in Washington, D.C., but nonetheless stayed with the FSA and became known for his haunting photos of government worker Ella Watson.
Carl Mydans: known for his pictures of disheveled farmers and their families living in makeshift shelters.
Jack Delano: an Eastern European immigrant who photographed migrant workers and famers along the eastern seaboard and later, Puerto Rico.
Depression-era photo subjects showed as much strength as suffering.
Although the government used FSA photographs to prove its New Deal programs helped impoverished Americans, FSA photographers also sought to portray their subjects as strong, courageous people determined to survive tough times.
The people they photographed were often resilient, prideful and fiercely independent. Ironically, many refused to accept the very government assistance they’d inadvertently become the faces for.
Instead, they used ingenuity and whatever resources they had to remain self-supporting, and considered government welfare a last resort. Some people were reportedly angry and embarrassed when they realized their photographs had been published.
The Library of Congress
Images from a Farm Security Administration exhibit.
The FSA photo archives left an unprecedented historical legacy.
The FSA created a historical archive unlike any made before. By the time the project was finished, FSA photographers had taken some 250,000 photographs. Since the photographers were funded by the government, all photos were and remain in the public domain—neither the photographers nor their subjects received royalties.
FSA photos appeared in popular magazines such as Fortune, Look and Life, making it almost impossible for any American to deny the devastating impact of the Great Depression.
Without the committed work of the FSA, the wealthy—some of whom actually got wealthier during the Depression—and people in the eastern United States might have remained oblivious to the full reach and suffering of rural Americans.
What began as a political ploy ended as a lasting legacy of a turbulent era in U.S. history.
In the mid-1930s, the Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Administration hired photographers to document the work done by the agency. Some of the most powerful images were captured by photographer Dorothea Lange. Lange took this photo in New Mexico in 1935, noting, “It was conditions of this sort which forced many farmers to abandon the area.”
Arthur Rothstein was one of the first photographers to join the Farm Security Administration. His most noteworthy contribution during his five years with FSA may have been this photograph, showing a (supposedly posed) farmer walking in the face of a dust storm with his sons in Oklahoma, 1936.
Oklahoma dust bowl refugees reach San Fernando, California in their overloaded vehicle in this 1935 FSA photo by Lange.
Migrants from Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Mexico pick carrots on a California farm in 1937. A caption with Lange's image reads, "We come from all states and we can't make a dollar in this field noways. Working from seven in the morning until twelve noon, we earn an average of thirty-five cents."
This Texas tenant farmer brought his family to Marysville, California in 1935. He shared his story with photographer Lange, saying, "1927 made $7000 in cotton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 went in still deeper. 1931 lost everything. 1932 hit the road."
A family of 22 set up camp alongside the highway in Bakersfield, California in 1935. The family told Lange they were without shelter, without water and were looking for work on cotton farms.
A pea picker's makeshift home in Nipomo, California, 1936. Lange noted on the back of this photograph, "The condition of these people warrant resettlement camps for migrant agricultural workers."
Among Dorothea Lange's most iconic photos was of this woman in Nipomo, California in 1936. As a mother of seven at age 32, she worked as a pea picker to support her family.
The family who lived in this make-shift home, photographed in Coachella Valley, California in 1935, picked dates on a farm.
Californians derided the newcomers as “hillbillies,” “fruit tramps” and other names, but “Okie”—a term applied to migrants regardless of what state they came from—was the one that seemed to stick. The beginning of World War II would finally turn migrants' fortunes as many headed to cities to work in factories as part of the war effort.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created as part of the New Deal to build relief camps and offer loans and relocation assistance to farmers impacted by the Depression and the Dust Bowl. A photography unit, including New Jersey-born Dorothea Lange (whose photos are featured in this gallery), documented rural America for the agency.This photo shows a migrant family stalled in Texas with a flat tire on their way to Arkansas to find field work.
Lange's access to the inner lives of struggling Americans was the result of patience and careful consideration of the people she photographed. Here, a field worker in Holtville, California shows shoes he had just made himself shoes out of an old tire.
Children of migrant workers collect water at the American River Migrant Camp in San Joaquin Valley, California.
Lange was best known for a series of photographs of Florence Owens Thompson, a 32-year-old mother living in a camp of stranded pea pickers.This photo of Thompson, “Migrant Mother,” came to symbolize the Great Depression.
Lange photographed this family of a turpentine worker near Cordele, Alabama. The father's wages was $1 a day.
Migrant workers toiling a field. Lange's colleague, Ron Partridge described how Lange would work, saying, "She would walk through the field and talk to people, asking simple questions—what are you picking? . . . How long have you been here? When do you eat lunch? . . . I'd like to photograph you, she'd say, and by now it would be 'Sure, why not,' and they would pose a little, but she would sort of ignore it, walk around until they forgot us and were back at work."
The wife of a migratory laborer and mother of three is captured by Lange's lens in Texas.
This photo shows a woman holding an infant, walking through a muddy migrants' camp in California.
Children of drought refugees sit at the back of their family's car as they arrive in California.
A Mexican-American mother and her baby photographed in June 1935 in California
A drought refugee from Polk, Missouri awaits the start of orange-picking season in Porterville, California. As they traveled west from the drought-ravaged Midwest, American-born migrants were often viewed as intruders.
A teenage sharecropper works in a field in Georgia, circa 1937.
A migrant shed worker takes a break at his post in northeast Florida.
Here, farmers in drought-stricken Oklahoma sit in the shade in August 1936.The FSA created a historical archive unlike any made before. By the time the project was finished, FSA photographers had taken some 250,000 photographs.
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Arthur Rothstein was the first staff photographer hired to work for the Farm Security Administration. FSA photographers were tasked with documenting people’s living conditions in rural America so the images could be used to report back to Congress.Rothstein was born in New York City and studied at Columbia University. Here, Rothstein's photo shows a woman spinning wool in Madison County, Arkansas.
As farmers and their families in Great Plains and the Midwest lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust Bowl, many headed west to California. Once they reached the west, they were often derided as "fruit tamps" or "Okies." This photo shows a migrant worker in the Yakima Valley, California. Rothstein once said he believed the role of documentary photographers was to "examine and scrutinize in order to reveal the truth."
This photo shows evicted sharecroppers camping along Highway 60 in New Madrid County, Missouri. In 1935, 50 percent of all white farmers and 77 percent of all Black farmers were sharecroppers.
A migrant worker picks cranberries in Burlington County, New Jersey, 1938.
Rothstein took this photo of an African American girl looking out the window of a log cabin in Gee's Bend, Alabama in 1938.
Mrs. Dobson and some of her nine children, as captured by Rothstein in 1935 in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.
This man spread sliced apples on a roof to dry to later sell them. The photo was taken in Nicholson Hollow, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.
As drought depleted crops, many in the midwest abandoned their farms to move west or into North Dakota's urban cities. This North Dakota farmer remained optimistic, according to photographer Rothstein.
Shadows of workers are seen through a tent at Quarter Circle U Ranch, Montana.
The son of a migrant citrus worker poses for Rothstein in Winter Haven, Florida.
A chef rings a dinner triangle at Rimrock Camp in Central Oregon Land Development Project, Jefferson County, Oregon.
Cotton pickers weigh their cotton on a farm in Kaufman County, Texas.
A family whose farm was optioned by the FSA's Resettlement Administration is shown on their porch in Oneida County, Idaho.
Farmer Russ Nicholson peels potatoes, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.
This June 1938 photo shows a farmer cultivating corn with fertilizer on a horse-drawn plow at the Wabash Farms, Indiana.
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