Living on their farms. They begin moving other places looking for new land to live on. People were in dire straits. Wasof the worst hit areas agriculture. A Program Began under one of the advisors to president franklin theevelt to document conditions under which people. Ere living this is when we didnt have television. Of folksdio but a lot did not have electricity. They sent out photographers to take pictures of what was happening and they put these pictures into newspapers whenever they could and into magazines and trade journals and things like that. It was difficult to get newspapers to accept these photographs because nobody wanted to face up to what was happening, but lori stryker who was an economist from Columbia University was really persistent. He was the head of this project and went to newspaper offices, contacted newspaper people, magazine people and pushed and pushed against these pictures to get them published and out to the public so they could see what was happening. Employedct photographers who traveled to the worst hit areas where they were planning to have Government Intervention programs. One of the things they did was to relocate people off of land that was expired, that had been farmed until it was depleted. Another project was to move people from urban locations, from ghettos into better urban housing hoping that they would be healthier and more productive economically. Photographers went to these locations to get these before and after pictures. Most photographers worked out of the washington, d. C. Office. Working directly for roy stryker. Dorothea lange lived in california. Husband worked for the same agency that roy stryker did. With written reports photographs were sent to the Washington Office and made their way to roy strykers office. When he saw these pictures he took them to the different offices in the Resettlement Administration and people were astounded. One of the best known photographers was ben shaw who an established artist. , he said ifthem thats what you want your photographers to produce i want to work for you. Work for royil to stryker for a while, but these pictures set the tone for how the agency was going to publicize the mission and the migrant mother picture is probably the most famous of the ones that Dorothea Lange produced. She was out of california in march. G the weather was bad and crops were frozen and people were not able to pick the damaged goods, so they were living on what little money they had saved and outdoor camps. She stopped and made some pictures and got back in her car went partway home and thought i didnt do what i was supposed to do. I didnt get the picture. She turned around and went back in the stories that we got from migrant mothers grandson, name thatther is the picture usually goes by. The story was that his grandmother Florence Thompson was camped near the edge of the road. Her husband and older son had gone to find whatever they needed to keep the car going. Apparently they had poked a hole in the radiator and needed something to patch it up with to make it to the next place to pick crops. Atrence thompson was back the camp with the children. Phones, no way to communicate. She was near the edge of the road which was a dangerous place to be. These migrant laborers were extremely unpopular in california. Need the dustbowl ones who were coming in from the drought areas of the United States. The farmers did not want these new people coming in. Townspeople did not want them camped on the side of the road, did not want to pay for their children to go to school. They were extremely unpopular and police were hired to move these people out to another part of the state or the county. Road, edge of the Florence Thompson was in a vulnerable situation. That is who Dorothea Lange photographed. She saw this woman with several small children and began working her way up to her. Apparently dry feeling was very good at engaging people in disappearingand into the atmosphere. She talked about herself as becoming invisible as she worked. To theld slowly talk people about what was happening. And straits they were in how they fed themselves, and then they would forget about her and she would begin making pictures. Thats what she did with Florence Thompson. There are a series of pictures showing the teenage girl sitting on it to sitting on her chair , the mother and her children behind her, and gradually she gets closer and closer and makes the famous photograph. As shed she knew as soon had made it that is what she needed to accomplish and went back home. That roy stryker had began as part of the Resettlement Administration. Those words did not sit well with the american public. Americans have wanted to have their own property in their own houses, their own piece of ground, they want you to decide what youre going to do for themselves. This Resettlement Administration was intended to help people in dire straits. Unpopular. Tically they were accused of being socialists, communists. That wasnt part of the american dream. They had to change directions. They had to stop moving people around. They needed to change the name of the organization, and they went from resettlement which implies certain things to Farm Security administration which implies the exact opposite, that you are not going to be moved you will stay in this secure situation. Direction. In a new there is more documentation of farms, of the american way of and, small town america less emphasis on changing things around. Rex tug well was sort of a lightning rod. Up with this Resettlement Administration program. Roosevelt couldnt live with the political fallout from it, took them away from the program and had him do other things thats when it became the Foreign Security administration. The agenda was slightly different and different people were put in charge. Began to be they the Farm Security administration they were wellestablished. Newspapers and magazines were glad to have their photographs because they have seen the anlity of the work, becoming established and reliable picture source. The pictures were free so they to newspapers, magazines, Book Publishers and that kind of thing. As a wellestablished organization, when kodak introduced color film they sent film to roy stryker to have his photographers try out. Kodak was trying to establish a new market. And they wanted people who would know how to use it effectively to try it out and publicize it. Photographers produced over 1600 photographs. You could see they were bracketing. They were under exposing some, over exposing others, not knowing where to set the light meters to get the best picture, but they got quite a lot of really effective pictures. And some duds. A few double exposures. The film is being developed elsewhere, they could not see the product that they had , so they were just learning how to use it. The slides are kept in an offsite storage location that has the right temperature and humidity conditions to make them last as long as possible. Imagesthe digital exclusively at this point. We had them at as high a resolution as technology can produce. We dont bother the originals because taking them in and out of there conditions will make them deteriorate more quickly we want these to last in perpetuity. Marion was trained as a newspaper photographer. She was assigned to the womens page, was very confined in what she could make photographs of. She worked with paul strand and ralph steiner. She was also selftaught. They gave her private instruction and comment on her work. She even photographed for frontier film people of the cumberland. They got to know her and her work fairly well. She hired her and sent her to work in the most difficult part of the resettlement territory. Southern United States for the most agricultural of the most conservative and the most racially troubled. Marion was the ambassador, she could go to any situation and people like her. She could calm nerves and make photographs that didnt upset them that would still meet the agencys agenda for documenting the need for change. She traveled for most of her year most of her three years for the securities administration. She traveled in the south. Gotwas one of the first color film. You can see the bracketing in photographs ofde american flags, people celebrating fourth of july. These flag photographs get used heavily. Photographs of these joints which are dance halls out in the sticks. Very simple music, no amplification just people buting as they would dancing went on there. She made photographs of a lot of former plantations where they were tenant farmers working for plantation owners she could relate well to both of them. Some of her more interesting pictures show little kids out fishing in the bayou. People lounging around waiting picking in florida crops there. Having to wait until the crops are ready, waiting around for the next crop to come to fruition. Lifeictures show a way of that some consider to have vanished, but occasionally somebody will write in and say if you go to that same location today you will see life is very much the same as it was then. When flickr started putting images online, the library was approached to see if there was any way that we could use it to disseminate our photos. We thought about it for a while and realized it was a way that we could get better information about the picture, that it was not just a oneway street at the ,ibrary giving information out but a way of capturing what people knew about these places. For many of these pictures we had fairly minimal captions, the name of a town. When the pictures went online people would write and to say that is such and such an intersection in the building behind that street sign is such and such a business, my family owned it or we went for dinner every friday night, that kind of thing. We have a lot of information from people. We would never have had the time to go out and sign for ourselves. This is been a good cooperative arrangement. She had a larger area to cover than the other photographers and that there were more resettlement projects. It was a much more tense area that she had to cover. Stryker was pulling her out of one job and sending her off to another for the whole time she worked for him, except when she went to eastern kentucky. She broke loose and met people who introduced her to the superintendent of schools who took her up creek beds to show her where the children lived who went to the schools in that area. She had two people in the small photographing jackie. Wasa meal trading day, it usually the first sunday of each month. People would bring in their animals that they wanted to trade to either sell them for cash or trade them for other animals. Very old tradition back to the market days in england. These are the few opportunities that she took a break loose. She wanted to come back and document more. The opportunity arose. Its good that she got to do as extensive coverage as she did. This man was an engineer before he became before he came to the securities administration. He operated in the factory. He became an artist. He first wife was an artist thought that would be a more interesting way of life. He went to an art colony with her. They gradually drifted apart he stayed with his art. He became the son that roy stryker didnt have. He gave it up because of poor eyesight and school fees and he went off to world war i anticame back a different person with a much broader outlook but he respected the engineering mindset. He saw that in the way russell lee went about making pictures. If he got interrupted in that sequence, he made a little detour, shows what has happened and went back to his process. He pictures you have makes his pictures in town if there is a sideshow, if there is Something Interesting in his initial agenda, he covered it but when he leaves town he remembers to take a picture leaving whatever the town name is, so he is very thorough and methodical. Of most famous pictures are pie town, new mexico. He went there because he thought it was intriguing. When he got there he found people who had left their farms, not been able to take up other farms. Lost their leases or had not been able to maintain payment from their farm for the bank went broke because of the Great Depression and many of them ended up in new mexico in this little squatters community in pie town. From the usually southern states, as was russell lee himself. He felt comfortable with them collecting their stories, making pictures of their lifestyle. Similared in ways very to the early pioneers in this country. They build houses using materials at hand. Many of them dug holes in the ground and had dugouts. There was very little lumber, so they use that for roofing, but the path itself was mud walls. They lived a very colorful lifestyle. They made their clothing out of bright colors. They worked the land and lived a existence andouth there was a lot of appeal in documenting that because at the time, most people in this country were descended from people who had arrived as farmers and who had taken up land farther west. It was a story people could relate to. Russell lee, from his experience as a painter would get photographs that were just little gems. Particularly this very plain house. Who lived there have done what they can to make it beautiful. The textures, the sidewalk, different brushstrokes in the stucco are there to be seen. In placespainted red to make it pop out. There are lace curtains in the window, very inviting him a very appealing and very humble. You can see the edge notching at the top of the picture. Part of a defect, it is a sheet of film. You can read kodak across the top. Those words in that edging would not appear in the print but it was there to show the whole picture is on the screen. John came to the Resettlement Administration as a clerk delivery boy. He had been in graduate school at catholic university, but he got kicked out for bad behavior. He was studying to be a poet, but when he started working with the pictures on the files, putting them back in the file cabinet after people had to do thatrch, he began to see there was poetry and visual images. Took up a camera. Some of the photographers would work with him when they came in from the field. They would give him a few pointers here and there but he was largely a selftaught photographer. He became quite the lyricist. He made pictures that were beautiful to look at. He was not very steady. He did not want to keep track of where he went and what he did. Leave his rented car someplace and take the train back to washington. For royry difficult stryker to live with but everybody loved the pictures he produced. He traveled around the United States and he wrote wonderful letters back home describing what he had seen. Stryker. Of them to roy he was not well known to historians of photography until recently when his family gave the letters to the library of congress, and now you can match his letters to his wife and his mother with the pictures that he made. Wherever he went he had a sense of humor. He would make a picture of cigarette bets in the street because he thought it was funny. Hotelsd make pictures of with funny signs in front of them, but many of his images are pure pro it poetry to the eyes. His pictures from texas when he was sent to document preparations for world war ii. So, thesere, 1943 or boys look so serious. I keep thinking, did they have to go fight in the war . The other pictures made in this series show war bond posters, children looking at globes and maps trying to figure out where these countries are that are suddenly in the news. The seriousness of these boys and the strength of character that i read in their faces makes me think they wouldve been good soldiers. Hasink everybody encountered the inoculation situation. Everybody hates it and this little girl looks like she is beginning to tense up, and this little doctor looks like she is preparing to give her her shot. The unitedways states try to get out of the Great Depression was to create jobs for people. They did a lot of Major Construction projects. Dam building to provide electricity. Dam one was a huge employing lots of people. These dams for the most part are still in use. Now we are seeing the flip side of building these dams. They have diverted water from some groups who relied on the water to other people who now has on the water and this been an issue throughout u. S. History. Workers have no protection from the chemicals and the dust and whatever was in the environment, whatever they were doing, very dirty work. We didnt know it at the time, but a lot of Health Problems arose because of these working conditions. We now make efforts to keep people safe while working in similar situations. This was the beginning of the Major Industrial push in the United States. From being two thirds agricultural before world war ii to two thirds industrial and urban. It was a time of major change. Out thatople will find the color photographs are just part of a larger view of the country at that time. I hope they will go to the website. They can see the 14 million pictures, references, descriptions of the pictures. Digitized images. We have 1,400,000 online. Many of those are in the Public Domain and at high enough resolution that they can be downloaded and used for reproduction in books. Program is the first of a twopart look at color photographs. During the Great Depression and world war ii. Tog refers working for the u. S. Government were assigned to travel the United States and to document living and working conditions and were reduction efforts. In 1939 the photographers been began using
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