Scope and Content Note
The best known pictorial record of American life in the 1930s and early 1940s is the photographic collection begun by the Resettlement Administration and continued by the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. Headed by Roy E. Stryker (1893-1975), the Resettlement Administration's Historical Section was charged "not only in keeping a record of the administration's projects, but also in perpetuating photographically certain aspects of the American scene which may prove incalculably valuable in time to come." (1) Stryker's photographs portrayed "the America with which the Resettlement deals: sharecroppers, trappers, miners, lumbermen, farmers, plainsmen." (2) As the Historical Section was absorbed into the Farm Security Administration in 1937 and transplanted to the Office of War Information in 1942, the scope of the project broadened. By 1943 Stryker characterized the FSA-OWI photographic files as containing "the record of the war's impact on the domestic scene since 1942; the record of rural America from 1935 - the small town, the farm, the people - and the Administration's record on the land during that time." (3)
Although the Historical Section dispatched photographers throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, its nerve center was the Washington, D.C., office. The "home office" supplied photographers with film, flashbulbs, and equipment, processed requests for travel funds, projected and justified expenditures, hired and fired personnel, monitored thousands of captions, proofsheets, and contact prints sent to and from the photographers, prepared captions and scripts, processed and printed film, and maintained photoprint, card, and negative files. Aside from handling the paperwork required to maintain photographers in the field, the section supplied photographs without charge to newspaper, magazine, and book publishers and provided prints for exhibits and film strips. The volume of prints handled by the section was considerable. In a typical month, March 1937, the section distributed 988 photographs to publishers and prepared 5,467 prints and 164 enlargements for other Division of Information uses. (4) In addition the section lent, on a reimbursement basis, photographers to other government agencies for specific prearranged assignments.
The FSA-OWI written records consist of office files, caption lists, supplementary reference files, and scrapbooks spanning the period 1935-44. Properly speaking, routine photo requests handled by the Photographic Section from 1944 to 1946, after the transfer of the files to the Library of Congress, are not FSA-OWI documents. These are listed in the finding aid but were not microfilmed.
A. Office Files
The office files, the first series of documents, are a key to how the section functioned. Whenever possible, the original file headings have been retained and fastened documents kept together. For the convenience of the microfilm user, the materials within each file have been arranged in chronological order.
Several files are of particular interest. "Budget" includes estimates and justifications for personnel, travel, office and photographic supplies, and communication expenses. "Film Strips," a term used interchangeably with slide films, contains scripts for proposed productions. "Exhibits" chronicles requests and shipment of RA-FSA photographs and prepackaged displays to museums, government offices, fairs, and nonprofit organizations. The correspondence with the Museum of Modern Art became so extensive that after 1940 it was filed under the name of the museum. "Monthly Reports," the statistical summaries of operations, were actually compiled weekly in mid-1936, biweekly from October 1936 to June 1938, and monthly thereafter. The reports generally tabulate the number of prints sent to the publishers, the number prepared for Division of Information use, and the cost of photographic work charged to other agencies. The reports' "Other Activities" category briefly notes exhibitions and publications using RA-FSA materials and, in some cases, the projects of field photographers. "Personnel" includes notices of appointments, resignations, and reclassifications, staff lists, and requests for employment. Of special interest among the undated materials are classification justifications outlining the qualifications and duties of the field photographer. "Travel" consists largely of detailed lists of travel itineraries and expenses. Of special note (under "Travel, Miscellaneous, 1935-1937") is the exchange with Theodor Jung in which Stryker criticizes Jung's work.
B. Captions
The second series comprises numbered caption sheets of photographic negatives and transparencies taken by RA-FSA-OWI photographers. The sheets are in three major sequences: RA and FSA A-E (negatives larger than 35mm), RA and FSA "Miniature" (35mm negatives usually in strips of five), and OWI (negatives of varying sizes). Most sheets list negatives in approximate numeric order, together with letter codes for negative size and short descriptive captions. Generally at the beginning of assignments -- each assignment is usually given a block of sequential negatives -- appears the photographer's name and the month and year. Some caption lists, particularly those from the early RA period, are cleanly typed, but most are manuscripts or rough typewritten drafts with handwritten corrections. Manuscripts by the photographers are, in some cases, on hotel stationery.
The captioning procedure used by the photographers changed over the course of the project. Indeed, in an interview with Richard Doud of the Archives of American Art in 1964, Stryker stated that if there was one area in which the project was weak, it was the captioning. (5) Eventually a system evolved. Although there were exceptions, most photographers sent film to the lab for processing. After Stryker reviewed contact prints or sheets and indicated which images were to be printed for the files, the material was mailed to the photographers for captioning and additional editing. If the photographers took issue with Stryker's selection, the matter could be discussed when they visited the home office. The contact prints or sheets were returned to Washington and the designated images were printed for the file.
The photographer actually wrote two types of captions. The general caption was "a background story about the town, project, or family" that a photo story depicted. It sometimes gave information "of a more confidential nature than that appearing in the individual captions." (6) The general captions were sent to clients upon request. Although some carbon copies are included in box 13, the general captions were intended for the supplementary reference files. The individual captions of specific photographs, on the other hand, were to be strictly factual and under fifty words in length. (7) These were printed on the file print mounts and typed on the back of every duplicate print sent from the section. As part of the FSA-OWI file reorganization begun in 1943, the captions were standardized, retyped on strips, and affixed to the file mounts
The important feature of the caption sheets is that they enumerate all negatives made for each assignment -- the negatives printed for the files as well as those that were lost or rejected ("killed"). The lists are the only record of the many unprinted FSA-OWI negatives still in the files. Checking fifty killed negatives -- too small a sampling on which to base a definitive report -- we found that the earliest RA rejects were either missing from the files or punched through the frame. After the first year, however, many rejects, often nicked or marked "killed" on the envelopes, were saved for the files.
Unfortunately, not all the caption sheets have survived. Marion Post Wolcott's work in Belle Glade, Florida, in 1939, for example, is not represented, although it is covered in Supplementary Reference File 1586. (8) The sheets were regarded as drafts for the finished captions and were not routinely saved. In fact, a procedural note in the Paul Vanderbilt Papers indicates that caption lists were intended to be discarded after the photo mounts and caption cards were prepared. (9) Like so many other FSA-OWI office practices, procedures for the caption sheets developed independently throughout the section's operations and were not consistent. Although fragmentary and difficult to interpret, the surviving lists document the scope of each assignment.
C. Supplementary Reference Files
The third major series consists of the supplementary reference files. These hold general captions and background information on the photographers' assignments. Stryker encouraged photographers to collect related brochures, maps, and clippings as well as to keep accurate notes. The files are arranged by the microfilm "LOT" numbers that were assigned when the photographs were microfilmed in the mid-1940s. Not all microfilm LOTs have a corresponding reference file. For the convenience of the microfilm user, photocopies of the microfilm LOT cards have been added to the files.
The supplementary reference files include manuscripts and typescripts of considerable interest. Of note are original drawings from Jack Delano's railroad trip across the United States for the OWI (Supplementary Reference File 227), long handwritten captions by Dorothea Lange on migrant agricultural workers in California (Supplementary Reference File 344-345), letters and picture stories by Jean Lee, Russell Lee's wife and traveling companion, and occasional shooting scripts or slide scripts.
D. Scrapbooks
The last series is made up of scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine articles. The Historical Section collected clippings that either reported RA-FSA activities or reproduced photographs generated by the section. The clippings were pasted to 23-by-19-inch sheets that are now extremely brittle. For some articles, bibliographic citations were typed and clipped to the sheets. Although uneven in coverage and missing key stories-there is little on the controversy regarding Rothstein's skull photographs-they give some indication of how the FSA was represented in the press and to what extent the photographs were published. The represented publications range from trade organs such as American Cotton Grower to popular magazines such as Life and McCalls'. The clippings seem to have been organized originally in sections for newspaper, rotogravure, and magazine stories. (10) When the material was reexamined in 1984, the distinctions between categories seemed so vague -- copies of the same articles were glued in different sections -- that sheets were refiled in general chronological order. The exception is the box of clippings reporting activities in the RA-FSA regions. The reader should be warned that in many cases articles from different months are glued to the same page. Of interest under "Miscellaneous" is a chart reporting the publication history of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother."
The FSA-OWI office files, captions, scrapbooks, and supplementary reference files document the daily operations of the section, but they are by no means the only surviving FSA-OWI textual records (see Appendix 4). Stryker instructed photographers to address field correspondence to his home, 3000 39th Place, NW, Washington, D.C. "Telegrams, packages, pictures, and official mail" were to be sent to the section office, according to a procedural note in the Vanderbilt Papers. (11) Field correspondence exchanged by Stryker with the photographers, informal news or "gossip sheets," and other unofficial records are found in the Stryker Papers at the University of Louisville. The National Archives has relevant materials in the record group of the Farmers Home Administration (RG 96), the agency that inherited the records of the FSA and its predecessor. In the general correspondence of the Office of the Administrator, two series (Washington Office, 1935- 1938, and Cincinnati Office, 1935-1942) have photo-related documents under the classification numbers 167 (photography) and 168 (exhibits). It is possible that documents relating to assignments executed by FSA-OWI photographers lent to other agencies are found in the record groups of those agencies. Another, though smaller, cache of materials is the Paul Vanderbilt Papers in the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C. Vanderbilt devised the present organizational scheme of the FSA-OWI photo files and supervised their processing in the mid-1940s. His papers include reports describing his classification system, some FSA-OWI office records, and notes for a projected history of the FSA-OWI photo project.
Notes
1. U.S. Resettlement Administration, First Annual Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1935). p. 97.
2. From "Miniature Camera in Resettlement Administration Photography" (carbon copy), attached to letter (carbon) to William D. Morgan from Roy E. Stryker, August 25, 1936. Correspondence, General. 1936, box 2, FSA-OWI Textual Records. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
3. Letter (transcription) to Jonathan Daniels from Roy E. Stryker, September 13, 1943. Microfilm NDA8, personal papers held by Stryker in 1964, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. Also reproduced on the University of Louisville microfilm of the Stryker Papers, reel 3.
4. Report for March 1937. Monthly Reports, 1937-1938, box 4, FSA-OWI Textual Records, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
5. Roy Stryker in interview with Richard Doud, June 13, 1964. Transcript of tape 2, side 2, p. 33. Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
6. "Suggestions to Photographers Regarding Captions" (carbon copy). Paul Vanderbilt Papers, box 3, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
7. Ibid.
8. Readers should check both captions and supplementary reference files for information on specific assignments.
9. "Suggestions to Photographers Regarding Captions" (carbon copy). Paul Vanderbilt Papers, box 3, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
10. "Historical Section Scrapbook" (carbon copy). Paul Vanderbilt Papers, box 3, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.
11. "Correspondence" (carbon copy). Paul Vanderbilt Papers, box 3, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.