Career, and a look at the American IndianMuseum Photography collection. In 1939, newlyreleased color film to photographers working for the u. S. Government. American history tv visited the library of congress to meet curator Beverley Brennan and not about the collection of images documenting the Great Depression and world war ii. In 19 thirties, the United States experienced an economic depression and an agricultural disaster. It was a great drought. People were not able to make a living on their farms, they began moving other places looking for a new lands to live on. People who are in dire straits, one of the worsthit areas in the economy was agriculture. The Program Began under top well, who was one of the advisers to president Franklin Roosevelt to document the conditions under which people were living. This was back when we did not have television. We had radio but a lot of places did not have electricity, so they could not listen to the Radio Broadcasts to find out what was going on in other parts of the country. They sent out photographers to take pictures of what was happening, and put these pictures into newspapers whenever they could and into magazines, trade journals and things like that. It was difficult to get newspapers to accept these photographs because nobody really wanted to face up to what was happening. But roy striker, who was an economist from Columbia University was really persistent, he was the head of the project and he two newspaper offices, contacted newspaper people, magazine people and just really pushed and pushed to get these things published out until the reading public so they could see what was happening. His project employed photographers who traveled to the worsthit areas, where they were planning on having Government Intervention programs. One of the things they did was to relocate people off of land that it was expired until it was depleted and another project was to move people from urban locations, from gals and to better housings, hoping that they will be healthier and more productive economically. So photographers went to these various locations, to do before and after pictures. To show the need for settlement projects once they had been implemented. Most photographers were out of the washington d. C. Office, working directly for roy striker. He lived in california, and her husband worked for the same agency that roy striker did. She and her husband produce reports of what was happening in california. Days written reports were sent back to the washington office, made their way to roy strikers office. When he saw these pictures, he took them around to the different offices in the Resettlement Administration, and people were just astounded. One of the best known photographers for the Resettlement Administration was been shawn, who was an already established fine art artist. When he saw them, he said, if that is what you want your photographers to produce, i want to come work for you. So he got a detailed to go work for roy striker for a while. But these pictures set the tone for how the agency was going to publicize its mission and the migrant mother picture is probably the most famous of the ones that dorothea lanes produced. She was out in california documenting picking in march, 1936. She was bad, crops for frozen, people were not able to pick the damaged goods, so they were living on what little money they had saved. They were living in outdoor camps. She drove by one of these camps and made some pictures. Got back in her car and was part of the home and thought, i didnt do what i was supposed to do. I did not get the picture. I did not say what needed to be said. So she turned around and went back. The story that we got from migrant mothers grandson, migrant mother is the name that that picture thats so famous 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 that car going. Apparently, they poked a hole in the radiator, needed something to patch it up with so that they could make it to the next farm, the next place to pick crops. So Florence Thompson was back at the camp with the children, no cellphones. No way to communicate. How were they going to find each other when they has been and son came walking up the road . She was near the edge of the road, which was a very dangerous place to be. These migrant laborers were extremely unpopular in california. There was already a picking arrangement for the crops out there, they did not need these dust bowl oak ease that were coming in from the drought areas of the United States. The farmers did not want these people coming. In the town people do not want them to have on the side of the road, kept on the town, sit and want to have to pay for their children to go to the schools. So they were extremely unpopular. Police were hired to clear these people out, make the move on to another part of the state or the county. So i, by the edge of the road, Florence Thompson was in a vulnerable situation. And thats who Dorothea Lange photographed. She saw this woman with several small children, a teenage daughter and some younger children and began working her way up to her. Apparently, Dorothea Lange was very good at engaging people in conversation, and then sort of disappearing into the atmosphere. She talked about herself as becoming invisible as she worked. She would very slowly talk to people about what was happening, what streets they were in, how they fed themselves, that kind of thing. And then they would sort of forget about her, and she would begin making pictures, and thats what she did with Florence Thompson. There is a series of pictures showing the teenage girl out in front sitting on a chair. The mother and children behind her, and gradually she gets closer and closer and makes the famous photograph. She knew as soon as she had made it that. That is what she needed to accomplish, and went back home. This program that roy striker had, began as part of the resettlement of the administration, but those words resettlement did not sit well with the american public. Americans have always wanted to have their own property, their own houses, their own peace of ground and they dont want to be moved, they want to decide what they are going to do for themselves. So this Resettlement Administration was intended to help people who were in dire straits. But it was politically unpopular. They were accused of being socialists, moving people around so 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 youre not going to be moved, you will stay in a secure situation. So it took off and a new direction. There is more documentation of farms, more documentation of the american way of life. Of small town america and less emphasis on changing things around. Rex tug well was sort of a lightning rod. He was a freethinker and came up with this Resettlement Administration program. Roosevelt could not live with the political fallout from it. Took him away from the program and had him go do other things. And thats when it became Farm Security administration. So the agenda was slightly different, and different people were put in charge. 1937 or so, when they began being the Farm Security administration, they were wellestablished. Newspapers, magazines were glad to have their photographs because they had seen the quality of the work. It was becoming an established, reliable picture source. The pictures were free, so they were appealing to newspapers, magazines, publishing agencies, book publishers, that kind of thing. And as a wellestablished organization, 1939 when kodiak introduced color film, they sent film to roy stryker to have his photographers try out. Kodiak was trying to establish a new market, new product, and they wanted people who would know how to use it effectively and publicized it. The photographer spokes over 1600 photographs. You can see that they were blackening, they were under exposing some, over exposing others. Not knowing just where to set the light meters to get the best picture. But they got quite a lot of really, really effective pictures. Beautiful pictures. And some sort of duds. A few double exposures, but the film was being developed elsewhere. They could not see the product they had produced. So they were just learning how to use it. The coated chrome slides are capped and an offside storage location that has the right temperature and humidity condition to make them last as long as possible. We use the digital images exclusively at this point. We had them at as High Resolution that technology can provide at this point, we dont bother the originals because taking them in and out of their needed conditions will make them deteriorate more quickly. We want these to last in perpetuity. Mary post walkout was trained as a new form, and it was very confided in what she was making photographed was. She walked with paul strand and ralph stein are, who were art photographers from the late thirties. She was also self taught. But they gave her private instruction and were comment on her work. She even photographed for their film, for frontier films, people of the cumberland. They got to know her and her work fairly well, recommended her to roy stryker, who hired her and set her to work in the most difficult part the resettlement fsa territory. The southern United States were the most agricultural, the most conservative, and the most racially troubled. Marion was the ambassador. She too could go almost into any situation and people like her. She could calm peoples nerves. She could make photographs that did not upset them, that would still meet the agencys agenda for documenting the need for change. So she traveled for most of her three years for the Farm Security administration. She traveled in the south. She was one of the people who was given the color film. She was one of the first who got the color film. You can see the bracket in her work. She made photographs of the american flags, people celebrating the 4th of july, these back photographs get used heavily. She made photographs of juke joints, which are dance halls. Out in the sticks, usually. Very simple music, no amplification, just people playing as they would in their own homes. But dancing went on there. She made photographs of a lot of plantations, former plantations where there were tenant farmers working for plantation owners and could relate well to both of them. Some of her more interesting picture so little kids out fishing in the bayou. People lounging around, waiting for work in florida, picking crops there, having to wait until the crop is ready or of the crop is spoiled, waiting around for the next crop to come to fruition. Her pictures show a way of life that sometimes is considered to have vanished, but occasionally some one will write and say, if you go to that same location today, youll see that life is very much the same as it was then. When flicker started putting images online, the library was approached to see if there was any way that we could use the flickr to disseminate our photographs. We thought about it for a while and realized it was a way we could get better information about the pictures. That it was not just a oneway streak of the library giving information out, but also we have capturing what people knew about these places. So we had many of these pictures, we had fairly minimal captions, just the name of a town and when the pictures went online, people would write, this is such an such, and the building is a business that my family owned or we went there for dinner every saturday night, we got a lot of information from people that we would have never gotten to go out and find for ourselves. So it has been a very good, cooperative arrangement. Marion post wolcott had a larger area to cover than the other photographers in that there were more resettlement projects, it was a much tense or area that she had to cover. Striker was pulling her out of one, sending her to another. For the whole time she work for him, except when she went to eastern kentucky. She broke loose, 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. She had entrees to people in small towns, she is photographing jockey street. They had the first monday of animals who they wanted to trade, seldom for cash or trade them for other animals. They had a very old tradition back to the market days in england from a travel times. This is one of the few opportunities she took to break loose. She wanted to come back and document more, but the opportunity never arose. So its good that she got to do as extensive coverage as she did. Russell lee was an engineer before he came to the administration. He operated a factory. The he became an artist. His first wife was one, and he thought that was a more interesting thing. They gradually drifted apart, he stayed with his art, but he was not all that good at and. He realized he was a much better photographer than he was an artist. He began making pictures, he approached roy striker about maybe doing a project as a trial to see how it went. And became this striker he never had. He gave it up because of poor eyesight, because he could not buy his school fees and he went off to world war i. He came back a different person with a much broader outlook. But he respected the engineering mindset. He saw that and the way they went about making pictures. Russell lee did processes. He did beginning, middle and end. If you got interrupted in that sequence, he made a little detour and showed what had happened and went back to his process. So in his picture of, you have a sign where the town. He made his pictures in town, if there is a sideshow or something really interesting that was not in his initial agenda, it covers it. When he leaves town, he remembers to take a picture of leaving whatever the town name is. He is very thorough and what he does. His most famous pictures are of pie town in mexico. He went there because he thought it was an intriguing name. When he got there, he found people who had left their farms, not been able to take up other farms. They usually had lost their leases or had not been able to maintain payments on their farms when banks where the broke and ended up in this little squatters community in pie town. They were usually from texas, oklahoma, the southern states. As was russell lee himself. He felt very comfortable with them, collecting their stories, making pictures of their lifestyles. They lived in ways that were very similar to the early pioneers in the country. They built houses using materials at hand. Many of them dug holes and the ground and had dug out, there is very little lumber so they used that for the roofing. But the house itself was mud walls. They lived a very colorful lifestyle. They made their clothes out of the styles, which were bright colors. They had a very hand to mouth subsistence, and it was a lot of appeal of documenting that because, at the time, most people in this country were descended from people who had arrived as farmers and taken a planned gradually farther west. So it was a story people could relate to readily. Russell lee, from his experience as a painter, would get photographs that were just little gems. This particular house, a plane house, but the people who live had done what they can to make it beautiful. The textures of the sidewalk, different brush in the stucco are there to be seen. Plane would work, but theyve painted red in places to make it pop out. There are lace curtains at the door, a plant in the window. It just is very inviting, very appealing and very humble. You can see edge notching at the top of the picture. Its not a defect in the picture, its part of the film. Its part of a sheet of film, and you can read eastman kodiak across the top. Those words and that edging would not appear in the print that it was finally made, but its there to show that the whole picture is on the screen. John vachon came to the Resettlement Administration as a clerk delivery boy. He had been in graduate school at catholic university, but got kicked out for bad behavior. He was studying to be a poet, but when he started working with the pictures and the files, putting them back in the file cabinets after people had done research he began to see that there was poetry and visual images. Took up a camera, some of the photographers would work with him when he came in from the field. They would give him a few pointers here, if you pointers there, but he was largely a self taught photographer. He became quite the lyricist. You he made pictures were just beautiful to look at. He was not very steady. He didnt want to keep track of where he went, what he did. He was even known to go off and leave his rented car someplace and take the train back to washington. So he was quite difficult for roy stryker to live with, but everyone loved the pictures he produced. If you traveled around the United States, wrote wonderful letters back home describing what he had seen, wrote very few of them to roy stryker. So he was not very well known to historians of photography until relatively recently when his family gave the letters to the library of congress. Now, you can match his letters to his wife and his mother with the pictures he made. But wherever he went, he had a sense of humor. He would make pictures of cigarette butts and the street just because he thought it was funny. He would make pictures of hotels was funny signs in front of them, but many of his images are just pure poetry to the eyes. This is one of john vachons pictures from texas when he was sent to document preparations for world war ii. This picture, 1943 or so, and these boys looked so serious. I keep thinking, did they have to go fight in the war . The day not . The other pictures made in this series show war bond posters, sho