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ple and culture of the great city and offers a fond,
romantic glimpse of the changing cityscape over a
four-year period. This was not atypical. Though
the FSA, FAP, and other WPA agencies used
photography to help achieve their aims and further
their agendas, most of the photographers employed
by these programs approached their jobs creatively,
producing works with aesthetic and social impor-
tance that ranged far beyond simple propaganda.
A major archive of FAP images can be found at
the Museum of the City of New York as well as in
the New York Public Library’s Miriam & Ira D.
Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs
Photography Collection.
Eventually, both the FSA and FAP became too
expensive to continue. The approach of World War
II helped turn Americans from the introspection that
characterized this period in history, and increased
momentum for the already-growing economy. The
FSA was subsumed into the Office of War Informa-
tion with a much more purely propagandistic mis-
sion to produce positive images meant to boost
home-front morale. When various rural assistance
programs were reorganized in 1943, the FSA was
discontinued. The archive was transferred to the
Library of Congress where it is known as the Farm
Security Administration-Office of War Information
Collection and is available for public use.
The WPA’s emphasis on photographic documen-
tation had given America an unprecedented record
of the history and the culture of the 1930s. The FSA
photographers, in documenting the ravages of the
Great Depression on rural areas, produced images
that became etched into America’s collective con-

sciousness. The FAP photographers, in documenting

the minutia of city life and the changing American

landscape, provided for posterity a window into the

very soul of a pivotal decade in U.S. history.

AndyCrank

Seealso:Abbott, Berenice; Evans, Walker; Farm

Security Administration; Grossman, Sid; Lange, Do-

rothea; Life Magazine; Look; Propaganda; Shahn,

Ben; Stryker, Roy

Further Reading

Berger, Maurice.FSA: The Illiterate Eye: Photographs from

the Farm Security Administration. New York: Hunter

College Art Gallery, 1985.

Curtis, James.Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: FSA Photography

Reconsidered. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,

1989.

Daniel, Pete, Merry Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein.

Official Images: New Deal Photography. Washington:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.

Harris, Jonathan.Federal Art and National Culture: The

Politics of Identity in New Deal America. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Hurley, F. Jack.Portrait of a Decade: Roy Stryker and the

Development of Documentary Photography in the Thir-

ties. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,

1972.

Steichen, Edward.The Bitter Years, 1935–1941. New York:

Museum of Modern Art, 1962.

Stryker, Roy Emerson.In This Proud Land: America, 1935–

1943, As Seen in the FSA Photographs. New York: Gala-

had Books, 1973.

Yochelson, Bonnie.Berenice Abbott: Changing New York,

The Complete WPA Project. New York: The New Press,

1997.

WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION