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Photography’s Role In The New Deal: How the Farm Security Administration introduced America to Americans
“Through these travels and the photographs I got to love the United States more than I could have in any other way.”
— Jack Delano
Between 1935 and 1943, photographers from the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) were assigned to travel across their country to document poverty with the sole purpose of introducing America to Americans. Examining the images produced during this politically driven effort best known as the “New Deal” takes us to precious levels of intimate reality. The purpose of these images was to create awareness and empathy across the entire U.S. population during these harsh times.
Well-known photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, and Arthur Rothstein, among others, were responsible for bringing this important photographic work to life. The images of the New Deal are characterized as a journey in which we are presented to convicts and cotton field workers, miners and mothers, children playing in the streets and interstate migrants of the United States. The valuable thing about this compelling body of work is that each of image carries great weight in terms of “reality”.
