I am familiar with some of the magnificent black and white images produced during the Great Depression as part of a photography program by the Farm Security Administration. What I was not familiar with are the color photos produced for the FSA. That is, until I came across this article in the PDN.
The Photo District News (PDN) family includes PDN magazine, the award-winning monthly magazine for the professional photographer.
These are some amazing photos, and are all in the public domain.
14 Rare Color Photos From the FSA-OWI
Even today, many documentary photographers will tell you they are influenced by the works of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and 40s. Under the direction of Roy Emerson Stryker, the FSA sent photographers to document the plight of the rural farmer during the Great Depression and the progress of New Deal programs. When the U.S. entered World War II, the photography program continued under the Office of War Information (OWI).
The best-known FSA photographs are in black and white. Less commonly seen are the color photos by FSA and OWI photographers, shot between 1939 and 1945. Below we present a selection from the works Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection.
Photo by Russell Lee. Jack Whinery and his family, homesteaders, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940.
Those are great pictures! I like the high contrast color film of those days, whatever it was. They took awhile to download using dial up, but they were worth the wait. The world sure has changed.
The above picture tells a lot. The father looks to be in his late 20s/early 30s. The family size seems typical of the era, all the way into the 60s. If you worked a farm or homestead, the more children you had, the more hands you had to work it. It made sense …then.
I keep forgetting you have dial-up, and how frustratingly slow that can be. But the pictures are worth it.
Families were larger back then; I had eight brothers and sisters, and that wasn’t out of line. My mother had a friend with 24 or 25 children, I don’t remember exactly. They were even on the Ed Sullivan Show . . .