Delano’s work for the FSA was prolific, often
focusing on workers’ lives and detailing both work
and leisure, expressing the mission of the FSA to
create a repository of images of American life. His
assignments included migrant workers, Portuguese
fishermen in Rhode Island, Scandinavian commu-
nities in Minnesota, tobacco farmers in Connecti-
cut, displaced persons as a result of the construction
of military facilities and public works during World
War II, industrialization in the Virgin Islands, and
the economic conditions in Puerto Rico. Following
the dictates of Roy Stryker, who provided pho-
tographers with shooting scripts, Delano also
expanded and focused on racial injustice, a major
theme in his work. For instance, his photographic
study of the residents of Green County, Georgia,
for sociologist Arthur F. Raper’sTenants of the
Almightyfeature rare images of inmates in Greene
County jail, who while told to dance and sing for
the photographer are also portrayed with dignity
rather than exoticism or ridicule.
Delano sought to garner respect for his photo-
graphic subjects by highlighting their humanity
through composition, framing, and careful light-
ing; he formed a relationship with the subjects
rather than ‘‘stealing their image,’’ and finally,
included aspects of the person’s material culture.
His striking frontal portraits of families, workers,
and farmers are shot from low angles to convey a
sense of power or framing the subject against the
sky. When asked, Delano cited Ben Shahn and
Walker Evans as two influences on his work:
Shahn for his artistic composition and Evans for
his crisp attention to detail. Like other FSA
photographers, Delano did not develop or print
his own film; thus framing, composition, and
lighting at the time of exposure were essential to
the photographic narrative he constructed. Other
influences on Delano’s practice were formed dur-
ing a Guggenheim Fellowship to Europe in 1946,
which exposed Delano to religious iconography,
some aspects of which found their way into his
photographs. Some of his photographs have, for
instance, a triptych-like composition or a strong
internal narrative, made vivid by depth of field
and the equal lighting of background and fore-
ground. This strong depth of field was achieved
by using various kinds of lighting, natural and
artificial, including the use of bulbs in lamps.
Delano openly defended his decision to pose his
subjects since photography was never neutral and
always involved a number of decisions, large and
small. Indeed, Delano carefully set up pictures,
arranging family members, lighting the scene—
often towards creating a sense of naturalism. In
some of his photographs he created a feeling of
deliberate appeal to the viewer for sympathy or
understanding by directing his subject’s gaze at the
viewer, for example, in the photograph of a preacher
and his wife,Greene County Georgia. Delano did not
feel that this technique detracted from the documen-
tary value of the photograph. Rather, he felt that
framing the photograph and attention to composi-
tion was an aspect of truth telling. A photograph of
Polish tobacco farmers (1940) laughing has been
accused of being posed, but Delano argues that he
was not posing them rather he was interacting with
them. He also used mirrors in unusual ways, such as
to expand the visual horizon, as in his photograph at
a Thanksgiving dinner (1940).
Workingmostlywitha35mmandoccasionally
with an 810 camera, Delano wanted foreground
and background to be produced with equal clarity,
to view the subject most fully in their environment
for which he used a medium shot. He often chose
photographs that had vivid singular elements, which
could express a universal and shared meaning
regardless of the social background of the viewer.
Delano’s concern with the reception of the image
began with his first exhibition of coal miners in
which he refused to use frames. He then expanded
through his later television and film productions in
which reception among the working people whose
lives were captured was part of his political project
towards the inclusion of people who had been his-
torically marginalized. Although often shooting in
black and white, on his assignment to document
Puerto Rican sugar growers, he used the newly
developed Kodachrome color transparency film.
An effort towards racial and cultural equality
underpinned his work in Puerto Rico where he
lived and served as director of the Puerto Rican
government’s radio and television network follow-
ing the war and Puerto Rico’s new status as a
Commonwealth.
Delano was active in the country’s arts and cul-
tural programs, and is considered a major cultural
figure. Specifically, Delano’s photographs were used
as part of a broad program for social reform enacted
by Luis Mun ̃oz Marı ́n, the first elected governor of
Puerto Rico. Delano’s photographic series of the
public mourning of the 1980 funeral of Marı ́nis
important as a private and public tribute. In 1998,
Delano was honored with the first major retrospec-
tive of his work,The Art of Jack Delano, a traveling
exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution
accompanied by the publication of his autobiogra-
phy,Photographic Memories.
DanielleSchwartzDELANO, JACK