Works Progress Administration (WPA) Photography
During the Depression, the Historical Section of the Farm Securities Administration was charged with the purpose of recording and publicizing the government’s farm programs. Begun in 1935 under the direction of Roy Stryker, the F.S.A. program aimed "to introduce Americans to America." The staff photographers' were sent to explore rural and small-town America to capture the vernacular and commonplace. Arthur Rothstein worked with the unit from 1935 until 1940, focusing on the conditions of displaced farmers who had suffered the double calamities of drought and economic depression. His 1936 image Dust Storm, Cimarron County is considered a signature image of the F.S.A. program. Ben Shahn, who later became better known for his paintings, joined the program in 1935 and made a three-month trip through the South. His Striking Miners, Scott’s Run, West Virginia of 1935 is both compassionate and sympathetic, a group portrait of enduring hardship with dignity intact. Russell Lee, also a painter, was with the program from 1936 until the program ended in 1942. An early user of the 35 mm camera, Lee shot and printed hundreds of scenes prior to selecting his signature images.
By the 1940s, the F.S.A. photographers' attention shifted
to celebrating the natural landscape and traditional values, aiming for a
deliberately affirmative tone to comfort a nation being drawn into World War
II. Marion Post Wolcott joined the unit in 1938 and was sent to Kentucky with
the assignment to capture “. . . the remote back country area: going
to school; burying their dead; delivering mail; bringing groceries up the
creek bed, barefoot, or on horseback; how people spent their leisure, their
recreation and games.” She spent the summer and fall of 1940 in Kentucky,
taking most of her pictures in Louisville, Lexington, and the Appalachian
region of the state.
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