O

OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION

The Office of War Information (OWI) is often con-
sidered significant because it ended a fertile period
of New Deal-sponsored documentary photography
in the United States. Indeed, the important Farm
Security Administration (FSA) division of photo-
graphers lasted for less than one year after being
absorbed by the OWI. But the OWI’s support for
photography is more accurately seen as a transi-
tional stage in government support for the arts
more generally. The direct employment of photo-
graphers documenting rural and ethnic commu-
nities during the Great Depression gave way to
controlled propaganda during the Second World
War and later to covert support for private institu-
tions during the first two decades of the Cold War.
In another stage, between 1965 and 1995, the Na-
tional Endowment for the Arts actively funded vi-
sual artists in the United States.
The OWI was established as a branch of the
Office for Emergency Management by an executive
order on June 13, 1942, six months after the Uni-
ted States entered the Second World War. Like the
British Ministry of Information and the Canadian
Wartime Information Board, the OWI was a cen-
tralized information agency. The Domestic Opera-
tions Branch of the OWI oversaw and funded the
production of all forms of U.S. media. The Over-

seas Operations Branch sought to control the inter-

national circulation of both domestic and foreign

media. Only Latin America, which was the terrain

of Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordina-

tor of Inter-American Affairs, fell outside of the

OWI’s reach.

OWI officials were culled from the top ranks of

journalists, writers, and artists. Liberal radio com-

mentator Elmer Davis directed the OWI and his

associate directors included playwright Robert

Sherwood and writer Archibald MacLeish, who

served simultaneously as Librarian of Congress.

The journalists at the OWI felt uncomfortable cen-

soring reportage, and an internal debate quickly

arose over whether the OWI should ensure the fac-

tual representation of the War or engage in selective

dissemination of information. As we shall see, the

OWI’s use and later abandonment of photography

fell at the center of this debate.

In October 1942, the OWI took over the photo-

graphic unit of the FSA. Economist Roy Stryker had

originally founded the unit for the Resettlement

Administration in July 1935, and in 1937 it moved

to the Historical Section of the FSA’s Information

Division. Throughout the second half of the 1930s,

FSA photographers including Walker Evans,

Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, and filmmaker Pare