A National Book Award winner mines photographic gold to show—and tell—the story of the Great Depression. In an exquisitely curated volume of 140 full-color and black-and-white photographs, Martin W. Sandler unpacks the United States Farm Security Administration’s sweeping visual record of the Great Depression. In 1935, with the nation bent under unprecedented unemployment and economic hardship, the FSA sent ten photographers, including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, on the road trip of a lifetime. The images they logged revealed the daily lives of Southern sharecroppers, Dust Bowl farmers in the Midwest, Western migrant workers, and families scraping by in Northeast cities. Using their cameras as weapons against poverty and racism—and in service of hope, courage, and human dignity—these talented photographers created not only a collective work of art, but a national treasure. Grouped into four geographical regions and locked in focus by rich historical commentary, these images—many now iconic—are history at its most powerful and immediate. Extensive back matter includes photographer profiles and a bibliography.

This book features photographs taken for the Farm Security Administration by ten renowned photographers, featuring scenes from regions throughout the United States.

The Great Depression was a major economic crash that hit the US in the late 1920s. While many people suffered from the crash, Black Americans were hit especially hard. Photographs from the time give readers a firsthand look at the historic era. Then discover the theories behind the crash, the policies made to boost the economy, and how the Great Depression ended. Read WokeTM Books are created in partnership with Cicely Lewis, the Read Woke librarian. Inspired by a belief that knowledge is power, Read Woke Books seek to amplify the voices of people of the global majority (people who are of African, Arab, Asian, and Latin American descent and identify as not white), provide information about groups that have been disenfranchised, share perspectives of people who have been underrepresented or oppressed, challenge social norms and disrupt the status quo, and encourage readers to take action in their community.

Explores and analyzes the historical context and significance of the iconic Dorothea Lange photograph of a migrant mother during the Grea Depression.

A collection of illustrated, black-and-white photographs by American documentary photographer and photojournalist, Dorothea Lange, depicting American migrant workers and sharecroppers during the Great Depression.

Russell Lee is widely acclaimed as one of the most outstanding documentary photographers of the twentieth century. His images of American life during the Great Depression, created for the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1942, hold a preeminent place in one of history's best-known and most useful photographic collections. This famous body of work demonstrates Lee's extraordinary ability to reveal the humanity of his subjects and to become a part of the communities he photographed. It also displays Lee's superior technical ability—his legendary skill in using a flash enabled Lee to create some of the finest candids in the history of photography. Russell Lee Photographs is the first book to show the full range and quality of Lee's entire oeuvre beyond the FSA work, as well as the first major publication of his photographs since F. Jack Hurley's 1978 book, Russell Lee: Photographer (long out of print). The book contains over 140 images, 101 of which have never appeared in book publication. The photographs are grouped into suites of images that represent all of Lee's important, non-FSA subjects: early work from New York City and Woodstock; the Spanish-speaking people of Texas; the mentally and physically disabled; political campaigns, including the Kennedy-Johnson campaign of 1960; commercial work for chemical and other companies; a portfolio of images of Italy; and quintessential scenes of small-town life. Setting Lee's images in context are a foreword by John Szarkowski, one of America's leading photography curators and critics, and an introduction by Lee's friend and fellow photography educator J. B. Colson, who offers fascinating personal insights into Lee's life and career. Considering Russell Lee's stature in American photography, it is surprising that much of his post-FSA work is unknown to the public and has been seldom seen even in the photography community. By making these images readily available for the first time, this book gives long-overdue recognition to the full range and excellence of Lee's work. Russell Lee Photographs is the essential book on this major American photographer.

"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018—The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2019 California Book Awards Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union’s disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio’s horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins’s work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins’s pictures, Congress would pass legislation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical “national park,” the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth’s landmark 1948 “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea.” Watkins’s photographs helped shape America’s idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins’s clients, customers, and friends were a veritable “who’s who” of America’s Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Frémont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today’s America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn’t just reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling of Watkins’s story will fascinate anyone interested in American history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.