Farm Security Administration photographs at the NYPL Picture Collection

 Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York: Photo | Verso Publications, LLC, 2020.   ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)  Identifiers ISBN  978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook)

Farm Security Administration photographs at the NYPL Picture Collection

Almost as soon as the Farm Security Administration photographs were printed in Washington D.C. they were finding their way into the New York Public Library's Picture Collection for circulation, study, and  exhibition.

Javitz recognized these photographs as extremely useful far beyond their original intent. In her 1941 research paper entitled The Organization of Pictures as Documents for the Carnegie Corporation, Javitz explains:

During the past few years photographs were made by the Farm
Security Administration to record the plight of the farmers, their struggle against
soil erosion and against the results of unscientific farming of worn land. These
photographs have become tools for use in fields far removed from the purposes for
which the pictures were originally made. Long after they cease to be propaganda to
attract legislators to remedy the abuse of the nation’s natural resources, these same
pictures will serve the public in many other capacities. Their permanent contribution
will be that they give a graphic insight into a section of life in the United States
during the fourth decade of the Twentieth Century. From these pictures the future
can glean an indictment of wastefulness and heedlessness with human and natural
resources; but also, from them. People will receive a sight of daily life of ordinary
people, their ways of eating and cookery, their fun and their religion their makeshift
churches and their license plates shacks, the faces of the laborer, the sharecropper,
the small-town drugstore clerk and the village teacher.
These pictures are for the legislators and, also, they are for the sculptor, the
novelist, the dramatist, the musician and the poet. These pictures preach to the
administrator of housing and to the administrator of justice; they are a text for the
sociologist, a weapon for the politician and inspiration for the writer.

Now close to being fully digitized, these FSA images live on to inspire and document our American past during a dark and yet hopeful time. See https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/farm-security-administration-photographs#/?tab=navigation

Available now 

Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York: Photo | Verso Publications, LLC, 2020.   ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)  Identifiers ISBN  978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook)

See our Pinterest Page for a curated selection at: 

https://www.pinterest.com/atroncale212/pictures-as-documents-the-new-york-public-library/


Subject heading: Gambling - cards. Poker game in home of day laborer, Sunday afternoon. Near New Iberia, Louisiana. 1938. Russell Lee. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1938).  Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/3af49b00-0633-0137-8667-039956228116

General store interior, Moundville, Alabama. Walker Evans. 1935. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1936 - 1936).  Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/035c8230-bb7b-0132-0f32-58d385a7b928

 

[Market sign.] Winston Salem, North Carolina  Walker Evans. 1935. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/661d3250-bb7b-0132-fd02-58d385a7b928 

 


Subject heading: G. (geography) United States - Life. Editor of the newspaper at Marked Tree, Arkansas, where the sharecroppers' union originated. Ben Shahn. 1935. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/2b1bdc60-db0f-0132-367f-58d385a7b928

 


Street scene [church steps] in New Orleans, Louisiana . 1935. Ben Shahn. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/789b9160-fc0d-0132-46e2-58d385a7b928

NYPL Picture Collection Source cards

 




 Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York: Photo | Verso Publications, LLC, 2020.   ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)  Identifiers ISBN  978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook)

#photography, #visual arts, #photographers, #visualresources, #librarians, #documentation, art libraries, art history, theater, #NewYorkCity, #FarmSecurityAdministration, #LibraryofCongress, #visualliteracy, Sol Libsohn, #illustration, #advertising, #Troncale, publishing, children's, art, photo, #WPA, #FederalArtProject, #circulation, #NewYorkPublicLibrary

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