Farm Security Administration Photographs

NYPL's Farm Security Administration (FSA) collection is comprised of approximately 40,000 photographs taken during the 1930s and 1940s by Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, and Russell Lee, among others. Initially the government project documented the Resettlement Administration’s distribution of cash loans to displaced and struggling farmers and its construction of planned communities, but later broadened its focus to include migratory laborers in the Midwest and West, as well as sharecroppers in the South. Eastern locations including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are represented as well. Under the Office of War Information, the agenda shifted to themes of patriotism and war production. NYPL's FSA photographs were transferred to the Wallach Division’s Photography Collection from the Library's Picture Collection.