# FSA/OWI documentary photography

> Black-and-white photographs made for a US government agency in 1935–1944 to show what the Depression did to rural America and what the New Deal was doing about it: sharecroppers in their houses, migrants at roadside camps, eroded farms, small-town streets. People are seen at eye level inside the setting that explains them, often looking back at the camera. Prints are sharp, full-toned and unmanipulated, and every picture was filed with a caption and sent out to magazines, newspapers and books.

- Period: 1935–1944
- Kind: Documentary & reportage
- Also called: Farm Security Administration photography, FSA photographs, Resettlement Administration Historical Section, New Deal documentary photography
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/fsa-documentary/

## How the look is made

- Show people inside the setting that explains them: the bare room, the tent camp, the field, the sign over the door.
- Stand at eye level and at a middle distance, and let people look back at the camera if they want to.
- Print straight, sharp, full-toned black and white; never soften, montage or dramatise the picture.
- Write down names, places, dates and what people say, and caption every frame.
- Work to an assignment and in series, so the pictures can be published together with text as a case.

## How it is lit

- Available daylight, overcast or hard rural sun, with no reflector or fill.
- Window light falling across a bare room or porch.
- A flashbulb on the camera for dark interiors.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the sun, about 45° to the camera’s left, high, hard.

## Camera settings

35–55 mm · f/8–f/32 · 1/250–0.5 s · ISO 25–200 (on 4x5), inferred. Lange's 4 × 5 Graflex, Evans's 8 × 10 view camera and 35 mm cameras (Post Wolcott), all with normal lenses, about 35–55 mm equivalent. Apertures and times are inferred: f/8–f/16 at 1/100–1/250 s handheld, f/16–f/32 and slower on the tripod, flashbulbs indoors.

## Directing people

Families stand or sit in a row in their own room, doorway or yard, square to the camera, arms at their sides or hands in the lap, and look straight into the lens with grave, unsmiling faces; workers stay absorbed in their task; a worried mother sits with a hand at her chin, looking away. Nothing is acted; a few portraits are directed with a prop.

## Styling

Nothing is styled: people wear their own worn, patched work clothes and no make-up, in their own bare rooms, porches, tent camps and fields, among their few possessions as they are; at most the photographer moves an object or hands a sitter the tools of their work.

## Before you shoot it

These are photographs of real, often destitute people, made for a government programme that meant them to persuade; many sitters were not asked their names, were not paid and had no say in how the pictures were used (Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in Migrant Mother, later said Lange did not ask her name and had told her the pictures would not be sold). Do not generate images that pass as Depression-era or FSA photographs, of real or invented people, and do not stage poverty as a period look. Use the real public-domain photographs, credit the photographers and name the sitters where captions or later research do; for new documentary work, ask consent, record names and words, and give people a copy.

## Photographs

- Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8c52407. Shown on the page: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c52407
- Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8a41115. Shown on the page: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a41115
- Gordon Parks for the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-013407-C (LC-DIG-fsa-8b14845). Shown on the page: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b14845
- Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-009058-C (LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516). Shown on the page: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b29516

## Sources

- Farm Security Administration, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_Administration (programme 1935–1944 under Stryker through RA, FSA and OWI; photographers and hire years; about 77,000 press prints and 644 colour images; publicity use in magazines; Twelve Million Black Voices 1941; collection at the Library of Congress)
- Roy Stryker, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Stryker (head of the Historical Section from 1935; photographers hired; transfer to OWI and its propaganda role; punching holes in rejected negatives)
- Migrant Mother, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_Mother (March 1936, Nipomo; sequence of exposures moving closer; thumb retouched out of the negative)
- Florence Owens Thompson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson (Thompson's 1978 statements that Lange did not ask her name and said the pictures would not be sold; no payment)
- Walker Evans, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Evans (RA/FSA 1935–1938; 8×10 view camera for most New Deal work; Hale County 1936 and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 1941; influences included Atget and August Sander)
- Dorothea Lange, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange (hired 1935; Graflex 4×5; An American Exodus 1939 with Paul Taylor; talked with sitters and recorded their words in captions)
- Russell Lee (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Lee_(photographer) (hired 1936; direct flash for interiors; Pie Town 1940 on Kodachrome)
- Arthur Rothstein, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rothstein (first photographer sent out by Stryker, 1935; dust storm photograph, Cimarron County, April 1936)
- Wikimedia Commons file pages for LOC fsa.8b29516, fsa.8c52407, fsa.8a41115 and fsa.8b14845: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg (LOC captions, reproduction and call numbers, negative formats: 35 mm nitrate for Post Wolcott, 4×5 safety film for Parks)
- 'Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"', Library of Congress research guide: https://guides.loc.gov/migrant-mother ('The images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film'; Lange: 'I made five exposures, working closer and closer')
- Migrant Mother, Library of Congress record transcribed on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Migrant_Mother_(LOC_fsa.8b29516).jpg ('1 negative : nitrate', '4 x 5 in.', LC-USF34-009058-C)
- John Loengard, 'Celebrating the Negative: Walker Evans', L'Œil de la photographie: https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/celebrating-the-negative-walker-evans-by-john-loengard/ (Bud Fields and his family sat for Evans in summer 1936; 'His thin ... 8 x 10 inch negative remains at the Library of Congress')
- Negro going in colored entrance of movie house ..., Belzoni, Library of Congress record on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Negro_going_in_colored_entrance_of_movie_house_on_Saturday_afternoon,_Belzoni,_Mississippi_Delta,_Mississippi_LOC_3549667550.jpg ('1 negative : nitrate ; 35 mm', call number LC-USF33- 030577-M2); the fsa.8a41115 file: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Negro_going_in_colored_entrance_of_movie_house_on_Saturday_afternoon,_Belzoni,_Mississippi_Delta,_Mississippi.jpg ('35mm nitrate negative')
- Washington, D.C. Government charwoman, Library of Congress record on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington,_D.C._Government_charwoman_LOC_3549663490.jpg ('1 negative : safety ; 4 x 5 inches or smaller', LC-USF34- 013407-C)
- Walker Evans, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Evans (an 8×10 view camera for most of his New Deal work)
- Russell Lee (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Lee_(photographer) (direct flash for interiors)
- Kodak Tri-X, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Tri-X (introduced around 1940 in sheets rated ASA 200 daylight; released in 35 mm and 120 in 1954; usually rated ISO 400; pushing to EI 800 gives very good results, EI 1600 needs more sophisticated processing, stand development reaches EI 3200)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/fsa-documentary/#sheet