Farm Security Administration

Formed by government to document effects of Great Depression

1929-39Photography division was headed by Roy StykerStyker hired group of photographers to

document era Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, Russell Lee, etc.

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)

Photographed victims of Depression for FSA in South and West

Most notable image is “Migrant Mother”

Stricken with polo as youth, left her with lifelong limp

Dorothea LangeHoe Culture,near Anniston, Alabama1936

Dorothea Lange,Plantation Overseer and His Field Hands, near Clarksdale. Mississippi, 1936

Dorothea Lange, Crossroads Store, Alabama, 1937

"Missouri family of five, seven months from the drought area. (Vicinity of Tracy, Calif., U.S. Highway 99). / Dorothea Lange

Out-of-work people frequently traveled West, during the Great Depression, seeking a better life in places like California.  This woman (from Arkansas) had been living in this shack (near Bakersfield, California) for three years at the time Dorothea Lange took this photo, circa 1935.

Dorothea LangeJobless on Edge of Pea Field, Imperial Valley, California1937

Near Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California. In grower's camp for migrant labor on the edge of the pea fields. Public health nurse interviews and advises prospective mother, aged seventeen, before arrival of first baby. Husband, aged twenty-three, is out picking. Made seventy-three cents this morning. / Lange, Dorothea, photographer.

Untitled, Dorothea Lange, 1935-42

Seemingly impassive as statues, members of a gang of migrant labors bend to a crop of lettuce in a posture they maintained all day long. / Dorothea Lange, Lettuce Cutters, Salinas Valley, California, 1935.

Dorothea LangeMigrant Mother;Nipomo, California1936

Power farming displaces tenants. Texas panhandle, 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

Power farming displaces tenants. Texas panhandle, 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

Walker Evans (1903-1975)

Known for pictures of interiors, display windows, billboards

Preferred to photograph environments rather than people

Left FSA for two months to live with sharecropper families in Alabama

Walker Evans, Houses and Billboards in Atlanta, Georgia, 1936

Walker Evans, Roadside Stand Near Birmingham, Alabama,1936

Tuscaloosa Wrecking Company, Alabama 1936

Walker EvansPenny Picture Display, Birmingham1936

Walker EvansHale County, Alabama1936

Sharecropper’s family, Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936.

Bud Fields in his cotton patch. Hale County, Alabama by Walker Evans, 1935-36

Washstand in the dog run...Hale County, Alabama. 1935 or 1936.

Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs, cotton sharecroppers, Hale County, Alabama by Walker Evans, 1936

Misc. photographers

FSA created 77,000 black-and-white documentary photographs

The project emphasized rural life and the negative impact of the Great Depression, farm mechanization, and the Dust Bowl (and race)

Man at the bar on Saturday night. Craigville, Minnesota.Russell Lee, photographer.

February 1939. Hidalgo County, Texas. "Kitchen of Farm Security Administration tenant purchase client.” Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration.

Dust clouds over the Texas Panhandle, photograph by Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein, March 1936.

The bleached skull of a steer on the dry sun-baked earth of the South Dakota Badlands.

Arthur Rothstein, photographer.

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma.

Arthur Rothstein,photographer.

Belzoni, Mississippi, in the delta area. October 1939. Marion Post Wolcott, photographer. "Negro man entering movie theater by "Colored" entrance."

Lancaster, Ohio. August 1938. Ben Shahn, photographer. "Sign on a restaurant." [Sign: "We Cater to White Trade only."]

Farm Security Administration took this photo of real life maids in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Credit: Marion Post Wolcott, U.S. Farm Security Administration

Memphis, Tennessee. September 1943.Esther Bubley, photographer. "People waiting for a bus at the Greyhound bus terminal."

On the way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee. September 1943. Esther Bubley, photographer. "A rest stop for Greyhound bus passengers on the way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee, with separate accommodations for colored passengers." [Sign: "Colored Dining Room in Rear."]

American Gothic,Gordon Parks