FSA Photography

What I'm getting from the two sources I have below (linked up the text) is the FSA was a Government funded project intended to document the way people were living in what was called "the dust bowl", meaning rural areas out of the cities. There was, however, photographers in every state (44 at the time, I believe). Everything looks like it is covered in dirt.

-Joanna







Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty.

The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. Critics, including the Farm Bureau strongly opposed the FSA as an experiment in collectivizing agriculture — that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. The program failed because the farmers wanted ownership; after the Conservative coalition took control of Congress it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and continues in operation in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.

The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935-44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty.
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FSA
Nearly 180, 000 photographs produced 1935-43 under the direction of Roy Stryker, first in the FSA, and later in the Office of War Information (OWI), represent the first major body of photographic images specifically labelled ‘documentary photography’.

During its lifetime, the Historical Section employed 44 photographers; a majority of photographs in the file are the work of fifteen men and women. The agency's work took place in two locations: at its Washington, DC headquarters, where Stryker directed operations, including a darkroom and the growing file of photographs; and in the field in the (then) 48 states and Puerto Rico.

After 1937 the photographers included more images of the community life of rural small towns, and a few urban centres. From 1940, as Stryker first subcontracted the section's photographic services to wartime agencies, then worked within OWI, hundreds of images also documented the nation's industrial production and home front activities. As the file at headquarters grew, so too did its use and reputation. FSA images were freely available, and appeared widely in newspapers and magazines, in government pamphlets, in posters promoting agency accomplishments, and even in a giant photographic mural in Grand Central Station in New York.