You Have Seen Their Pictures
by HARTLEY E. HOWE
Government photography, focused on the somber side of rural America, has produced some of the most vivid human documents of our times. Here is the story of the photographic section of the Farm Security Administration, told by a writer who knows the men and women behind the cameras.
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION PHOTOGRAPHS AREN'T THE sort of pictures a person forgets easily. A pregnant farm woman standing in the doorway of her battered cabin, a group of ragged children clustered about her. A father and two children running for shelter in a dust storm. Or a couple of fellows on the bum, trudging down the road past a big billboard reading: "Next Time Try the Train—Relax."
The story behind these photographs is not widely known, but it's a good story, and important to politicians, sociologists, economists, who can rind in the camera a highly useful tool. Important to people who want to record the world of today before it slips away into the world of yesterday. And above all, important to everyone who believes that democracy can succeed in a gigantic country like ours only when people are informed about the troubles of their fellow Americans and thus are impelled to do something to help them out.
Farm Security photography is government photography. The government has been using the camera almost since the days of Daguerre: to record patent drawings, to report wars, to show stay-at-homes the Indians and scenery of the Far West. And more recently, federal agencies have used photographs to teach people better ways to meet problems connected with crops, mines and forests.
What distinguishes FSA photography are its objectives. The first is to tell people, through pictures, about the great human problem with which the Farm Security Administration is struggling: the problem of giving a decent break to the lowest third of our farm population. The other basic aim is equally sweeping—to make a photographic record of rural America—a visual account of how America's farmers live, work, play, eat, and sleep.
…Farm Security's emphasis on what is taken, rather than how it is taken, has led to an extremely simple technique. Pictures are made from the viewpoint which shows the subject most clearly; unusual angle shots or trick lighting effects are extremely rare. Actuality always wins in any conflict with artistry…
You Have Seen Their Pictures
Classification: Photography
Publication: Survey Graphic
Date: April 1, 1940
Author: Howe, Hartley I.
Type: Article
From: The New Deal Network - http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/40b11.htm