Arizona Locales in America 1935-1946 : the FSA/OWI Photographs. Southwest

The Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) headed by Rexford Guy Tugwell was one of the many agencies set up by President Roosevelt under the New Deal program. Tugwell appointed his Columbia University colleague Roy Stryker to establish the historical section of the agency and to create public awareness of the realities of the great economic and agricultural depressions of the 1930s.

A team of some of the most gifted photographers of the time took more than 270,000 photographs between 1935 and 1946, creating a sociological and economic survey of all aspects of life in America. In 1942 Roy Stryker's unit became part of the Publications Bureau of the US Office of War Information, continuing after Stryker's resignation in 1943 until 1945 when the negatives were transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Only 87,000 of the 270,000 photographs have been printed, so the collection of prints in the Library of Congress reproduced here are in themselves a selection.

Each photograph is accompanied by a caption that describes the content of the photograph and gives its location, date, name of the photographer, and negative number. In spite of the collection being primarily a visual one, the captions are essential for a full appreciation of the photographs and are, therefore, included in the microfiche edition.

The thirteen staff photographers in approximate order of appointment were Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Theodor Jung, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Jack Delano, John Collier, Marjorie Collins and Arthur Siegel. Amongst the best known of the non-staff photographers were Andreas Feininger, Edwin Rosskam, Gordon Parks, Esther Bubley, and Fritz Henle.