In March 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt was elected on his New Deal platform, which promised to put people
back to work by creating jobs through a program of public works. The next year,
the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established to fund public projects
building dams, bridges, and parks as well as employing actors, architects, artists,
musicians, and writers.
One element of the New Deal was the Resettlement Administration (RA), organized in
1935 to provide aid to impoverished farmers, particularly through publicizing the needs
of these rural citizens (the RA was later absorbed by the Farm Security Administration
[FSA]). Dorothea Lange was one of more than twenty photographers hired to create documents
of rural America, which were then made available for government reports as well as to
newspapers and picture magazines. After the United States entered World War II in December 1941,
the division overseeing these photographers was transferred to the Office of War
Information (OWI).
Learn about two other FSA photographers whose work is included in the Getty collection:
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