The Photographers Who Captured the Good Depression

Not long ago, there’s been chat about reviving the Federal Writers’ Job (FWP), a Melancholy-era government software that utilized the era’s out-of-get the job done writers. The unique FWP noticed the choosing of thousands of writers who produced guidebooks, oral histories, children’s books, and additional.

Photographers ended up also doing essential federal government-sponsored perform at the identical time. As photographer and historian Michael L. Carlebach explains, the images plan sponsored by the Farm Protection Administration (FSA) “was the 1st try by the federal govt to supply a wide visual document of American modern society.”

Pea Pickers Line Up on Edge of Field at Weigh Scale, near Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California by Dorothea Lange
Pea Pickers Line Up on Edge of Discipline at Weigh Scale, near Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California by Dorothea Lange through JSTOR

From 1935 to 1944, the FSA used photographers to get pictures of the United States. It wasn’t as a great deal about art as it was a political venture, in accordance to Carlebach.