Monday 8 September 2014

Photogrammar: Archive of 170,000 Photographs Documenting the Great Depression


A migrant agricultural worker in Marysville migrant camp, trying to work out his year’s earnings. Taken in California in 1935 by Dorothea Lange.


In the 1930's The Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) hired photographers to travel across America to document the poverty generated by the Great Depression, hoping to build support for New Deal programs being championed by President Roosevelt. Marvellous photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein were among the photographers who took part. In all 170,000 photographs were taken and lodged with  The Library of Congress. A link to these LC webpages for FSA is to be found in Cardiff Met Electronic Library>Databases A-Z>Farm Security Administration (Cardiff Met password required).

Now Yale University has launched Photogrammar, a   platform for organizing, searching, and viewing these  historic photographs.
The Photogrammar platform gives you the ability to search through the images by photographer and alsoprovides an interactive map twith  geographical information about 90,000 photographs in the collection.

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