FSA

Web references:

Journeys and crossings, the Library of Congress

This web site contains 2 very good videos:

(1) About the FSA collection
The video provides a brief summary about the images - in total 170,000 negatives and 75,000 prints were received from the FSA team. During the 1990's all of these negatives were digitised and catalogued and put online making them freely available worldwide. Since the images "are the work of government employees" they are free of copyright.
The video also briefly explains the roll and handover between the three administrations involved in the documenting of American life in the early to mid 20th century: the Resettlement Administration (RA), the Farm Securities Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI).

(2) How to use and navigate the collection
A description of how to use and find you way around the digital images taken by the FSA photographers. How the previously unprinted images are catalogued and referenced as neighbouring images (ref Making Sense of Documentary by James Curtis) enabling the researcher to understand (and see) how the photographers approached their tasks and each particular photo-shoot.


The Library of Congress

This link takes you to the online reading room for all of the images by the FSA/OWI photographers. The catalogue is vast, but the search facility is good in that you can build your search a word or a number at a time. However, you have to have a reasonably good idea of what you're looking for - so start wide, check your results, then narrow/refine your search. There are some fantastic 'untitled' images.


FSA Photographers
Arthur Rothestein (1915 - 1985)
Theo Jung (1906 - 1996)
Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969)
Walker Evans (1903 – 1975)
Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965)
Carl Mydans (1907 – 2004)
Russell Lee (1903 - 1986)
Marion Post Wolcott (1910 - 1990)
Jack Delano (1914 – 1997)
John Vachon (1914 – 1975)
John Collier (1913 – 1992)

New Deal - background
The Roosevelt Institute - The New Deal
Yale University - The Great Depression by Joyce Bryant