WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION
The Works Progress Administration (WPA), estab-
lished in 1935 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
New Deal, was the overarching agency that in-
stigated and funded a series of programs to help
generate employment for the nearly 10 million
unemployed Americans during the Great Depres-
sion of the 1930s. Its philosophy was that through
federal jobs programs public facilities and infrastruc-
ture (such as highways and parks) could be built and
improved, and literacy and cultural awareness pro-
mulgated. The WPA became the largest agency
within the New Deal programs and was eventually
renamed the Works Project Administration.
Thus WPA’s mission was unprecedented in that it
not only carried out construction, beautification, and
other good works, it also hired hundreds of artists,
actors, photographers, and performers. The Federal
Theater Project performed original and canonical
plays, eventually supporting touring companies that
brought theater to the remote and rural areas of
America. The Federal Writers’ Project documented
the agrarian poor through their own stories, culmi-
nating in a number of books, includingThese Are
Our Lives.
Two key agencies in the area of photography were
created under the auspices of the WPA: the Federal
Arts Project (FAP) and Farm Security Adminis-
tration (FSA). The FSA had grown out of the
Resettlement Administration, which was intended
specifically to address the problems of America’s
rural poor. By 1937, the program had been integrated
into the Department of Agriculture and had become
its own agency. Rexford G. Tugwell, the head of the
FSA, employed his friend and pupil Roy Stryker, an
economist, to head the Historical Section of the pro-
gram. Stryker believed that through photographic
documentation the FSA could better preserve and
record the tenor of the time; Stryker’s emphasis on
photographs produced one of the most prolific
periods in American photography. During Stryker’s
eight-year tenure at the FSA, photographers such as
Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Ben
Shahn, and others produced more than 270,000
photographs for the American government, most of
them stunning images of the impoverished, rural poor
who had been neglected and often ruined by the
intense economic turmoil of the Great Depression.
Originally, the FSA photographers’ mission
was to produce supportive propaganda for Roo-
sevelt’s New Deal, but the images they captured,
far from simplistic celebrations of American life,
became haunting visual icons of the harsh condi-
tions of the poor, rural farmers, and their families.
Through the FSA’s photographs, Americans saw
first-hand the devastation caused by the Great
Depression and how affected families coped with
their hardships. In fact, Dorothea Lange’s photo-
graphs so captivated John Steinbeck that he inte-
grated her images into his epic story of the
Dustbowl Migration,The Grapes of Wrath.
The FSA photographs not only often incited
outrage and indignation at the suffering they
depicted, but also brought ‘‘documentary pho-
tography’’ into popular American consciousness.
Shortly after the FSA photographs began to
appear in various well-respected journals (due to
the tireless efforts of Stryker), some magazines
began adopting a mixture of text and photo. This
new editorial style gave rise to the still-popular
photojournalistic movement and helped shape the
newly-established American magazines such asLife
andLook, which became the standard-bearers of
this genre.
The FAP employed visual artists of all kinds,
including artists who documented and decorated
WPA projects including schools, libraries, and
other facilities such as state and federal parks. Pain-
ters and graphic artists designed posters for the
Federal Theater Project’s touring shows, created
advertisements for local WPA sponsored programs,
and helped produce various propaganda items,
including illustrated travel texts.
Although FAP photographers were employed
across the United States, some of the best-known
projects took place in New York where Berenice
Abbott, Arnold Eagle, Gordon Parks, Sid Gross-
man, and many others started their careers on FAP
assignments. Assignments consisted not only of
documenting other FAP programs, such as dance
or theater projects, but capturing various aspects of
city life. Labor projects, life on the streets, and
neighborhoods were photographed. One of the
best-known is Berenice Abbott’s Changing New
York, which documents with loving detail the peo-WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION