The stock market crash on October 29, 1929 signaled the beginning of very hard times for most Americans. As the effects of this banking collapse that followed spread across the country, reaching rural areas like Arkansas more slowly, a number of bad things came along with it. These included a sharp and continued increase in lay-offs, drops in wages, a reduction of state spending in Arkansas, and deflation. Arkansas, among other states, had its first taste of the troubles to come with the drought of 1930. With individual states unable to produce the funds to prop up the economy, the federal government under Roosevelt enacted the New Deal. Under state and local control, federal money was used to pay teachers, provide public sector jobs, and provide short-term relief like temporary housing and food.
The Resettlement Administration, which was renamed the Farm Security Administration in 1937, hired Roy Stryker in 1935 to find photographers to document the plight of tenant farmers, migrant workers, and sharecroppers. These photos would be disseminated throughout America to increase support for New Deal programs. Stryker hired a number of photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Jack Delano and Ben Shahn. Over 70,000 government commissioned photographs were taken between 1935 and 1943 with the artists allowed to record what they wanted. The photos were used in newspapers, published by the government, and put in museums all over, now all over the internet. The official photos dominate web content, although others taken outside this time period and outside Stryker’s influence can be found.
Before joining up with the FSA, Russell Lee took photographs of his own. In 1935 he bought his first camera, a 35mm, and began taking pictures of auctions in his hometown of Woodstock, New York, where people were being forced to sell their possessions. There are two such pictures in an online collection both taken beside a large house that is the location of an auction. One is of three women sitting in rockers with a bed-frame and a wardrobe. Another is of a man sitting on top of a stepladder and smoking a pipe. Below him is a pile of portraits and a push lawnmower. Russell Lee went to New York City shortly thereafter during the winter of 1935-36. Here he took photos of the unemployed moving through the streets of the city and gathered in front of what may have been government buildings or banks.
Walker Evans is arguably the most interesting character of the lot. Roy Stryker hired him in 1936 and fired him a year later, because of Evans’ refusal to toe the government’s propaganda line, which was one of poverty plus determination equals hope. Stryker sums this up in a rare quote: “You could look at the people and see fear and sadness and desperation. But you saw something else, too. A determination that not even the Depression could kill. The photographers saw it–documented it.” The photos Evans took seem to focus more on the scene, the architecture and various commercial implements like ads and gas pumps, and balancing that with the people. Very nicely done interpretations of these have been done and are available on-line. One such photo and commentary really caught my attention. It was a closeup of a cross in a cemetery with a strip of homes behind it and steel mills further on. A good site where Evans’ photos, along with biographical and interpretive information, can be found here.
Sent to document the Dust Bowl in 1936 by Stryker was another New York native, Arthur Rothstein. There is a rather long interview with him conducted by Richard Doud for the Smithsonian Institution. In it you can read all about Rothstein’s relationship with Stryker and the other photographers and oodles more about the thirty years afterwards he spent pursuing photography. I include him mainly for this photo entitled, “Fleeing a Dust Storm.” It, along with other photos and an excellently linked educational site, is available here.
Information on many of those photographers exists in large enough quantities so that sampling different sources is possible. The three photographers I looked at all had several pages devoted to their work during the period and before and after. The list given of their names is incomplete, because I got tired of updating it after continually running across longer and longer lists.
