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Dust Bowl Dramatization
Documentary Photography by the Farm Security Administration

“Today…we want a solid and substantial food on which to bite, something strong and hearty to get our teeth into, sustenance for the arduous struggle that existence is in eras of crisis. We want the truth, not rationalization, not idealizations, not romanticizations…”
– Elizabeth McCausland, “Documentary Photography,” Photo Notes, January 1939

Elizabeth McCausland’s metaphor of photography as nourishment is ironic given that starvation was a prevailing condition of the Great Depression. With scarcely any breathing room between the 1929 stock market crash and the presidential inauguration in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt came to office with a series of recovery plans collectively labeled “The New Deal.” From 1937-1942, while the United States government strove to address the needs of its impoverished citizens through the Works Progress, National Recovery, and National Youth Administrations, the Farm Security Administration’s (FSA) Historical Section undertook a photographic project that exhaustively chronicled federal efforts to alleviate the crisis of rural poverty; this would become one of the most memorable photographic collections in United States history, feeding the nation’s growing print culture and its consumers of the time (and still today) with stunning images of universal import and heralding a prolific period in documentary photography.

Roy Emerson Stryker’s aim as head of the FSA photographic division was to present an encyclopedic body of work of the “American Small Town.” Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, and later, John Collier Jr., Esther Bubley, and Gordon Parks contributed to Stryker’s vision, at various times. The stark naturalism of FSA photos contrasted with the soft-focus idealism of earlier Photo-Secession, Pictorialist images. The visual narratives the images told often overshadowed the captions and stories in the publications they frequently appeared in: Life, Look, and Survey Graphic, all new periodicals of the time. More than just illustrations of the text, these photos contradicted the condescending, sensationalistic or even racist slant of the textual narratives. While the technically proficient images were praised as “undeniable facts,” this praise often ignored the subjective but in some ways deeper artistic truth they presented: the dignity and self-awareness of men, women, and children in the face of a viewing public who largely blamed them for their misfortunes.

“…Documentary is a paradoxical mode of inquiry for it is as much about the creation of drama and emotion as it is about the ‘objective’ recording of ‘facts’.” – Cara A. Finnegan

Though the FSA’s focus was initially on the displacement of rural farmers, the Historical Section photographers captured other significant events as well, such as the evacuation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps, soldiers, and the lives of civilians during wartime, in factories,

in cities, and at home. The FSA merged into the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1942, and the photographic unit’s activities continued until 1943.

The wide variety of images and popular circulation of the Farm Security Administration’s photos did not preclude public and Congressional criticism of the project. Americans questioned the value of this publicly funded initiative, denouncing art-making as an unnecessary luxury in a time of economic distress. The fear of socialism also made the American public cynical toward the FSA’s aims to visually publicize the federal government’s “Big Brother” interventions through its New Deal programs. The 108,000 FSA/OWI photos nevertheless survive in the Library of Congress as an essential archive of American photographic history and a reference point for any earnest visual discourse on poverty.

Glossary:
Farm Security Administration – A federal agency that started out as the Resettlement Administration (1935). It was charged with rural relief efforts such as providing loans and grants, flood control, and setting up migrant worker camps during the Great Depression.
Photo-Secession – Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen initiated the Photo-Secession group in 1902. Their purpose was to exhibit and advance Pictorialism, a style that emphasized the photographer’s personal/spiritual expression with painterly qualities and effects of light. Surrealism and modernist abstraction in the 1930’s also portrayed subjects removed from the physical world. The two world wars persuaded many Pictorialist photographers, whether for financial or philosophical reasons, including Steichen, to give up Pictorialism for the raw sharpness of documentary photography.
Lewis Hine – His work set a precedent for the FSA photographic division’s endeavors. Hine freelanced for the National Child Labor Committee, where he took many of his most well-known photos of child labor conditions in factories, mines, canneries, and mills. While his earlier work focused on the suffering of laborers, his later work portrayed the dignity of their work and their skill and perseverance.

Sources:
Embree, Edwin R. “Southern Farm Tenancy: The Way Out of Its Evils”, Survey Graphic, March 1936. Finnegan, Cara A. Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs. Smithsonian Institution, 2003; The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Collection; Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History, Second Edition. Laurence King Publishing, 2006; McCausland, Elizabeth. “Documentary Photography”, Photo Notes, January 1939.

Handheld Stereograph Viewer, c. 1900
Assorted Stereograph Cards
Courtesy Dawn and Nelson Scherer.

Celluloid Victorian photo album/music box
Courtesy Dawn and Nelson Scherer.

Kodak No. 2C Autographic Junior camera, c. 1920
Kodak Senior Six-20, c. 1937-1939
Kodak Brownie Six-16 Target camera, c. 1950
Kodak Six-20 Brownie camera, c. 1950
Kodak Brownie Starflash camera, c. 1960
Cord-bound photo album
Courtesy Jeff Levy and Grandpa’s Antiques.