Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2007.

This thesis examines similarities in photographs made by the contemporary photographer Keith Carter and photographers active with the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s. Stylistically and in function, works by Carter and these photographers comment on social and cultural values of a region. This thesis demonstrates that many of Carter's black and white photographs continue, contribute to, and expand traditions in American documentary photography established in the 1930s. These traditions include the representation of a specific geographic place that evokes the spirit of a time and place, and the ability to communicate to a viewer certain social conditions and values related to such a place.

This thesis explores the work of Texan painter Alexandre Hogue, and specifically how his 1930s Erosion Series, paintings of wind-ravaged farms during the Dust Bowl, promotes environmental attitudes long before America had a well developed ecological language. It analyzes the Erosion Series in the context of Hogue's personal land ethics and those of his artistic contemporaries, showing that the 1930s series strives to depict the devastation caused by both drought and aggressive farming practices. A comparison of Hogue's work to Regionalist artists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood reveals that Regionalists' depictions of land during the 1930s created an unrealistic portrayal of American farms with eternal abundance. In contrast, Hogue's series explores man's relationship to land and shows how that relationship is often destructive rather than constructive. In many ways, Hogue's work is much more in line with works by FSA photographers and filmmakers who, similar to Hogue, imaged more realistic depictions of Midwestern farms at the time. Ultimately, this thesis asserts that paintings, and the fine arts in general, are an important step to a more environmentally minded future—a future Alexandre Hogue sought to promote through nine ecologically charged works.

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La naissance de la photographie sociale aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle est contemporaine d'une place nouvelle accordée à l'enfant dans la structure familiale. Le contraste est grand entre l'enfant riche, sacralisé, à l'innocence louée dans les arts, et l'enfant pauvre, souvent exploité mais représenté de façon surtout pittoresque. Tout en mettant l'enfant pauvre au cœur de leurs préoccupations, les réformateurs font usage de la photographie dans une optique de progrès social et d'intervention où texte et image se révèlent indissociables, qu'il s'agisse de Jacob A. Riis, journaliste et photographe à New York à la fin du XIXe siècle et de l'engagement de Lewis W. Hine dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants avec le National Child Labor Committee, dans un contexte de forte immigration, d'industrialisation et d'urbanisation chaotique, ou des photographes de la Farm Security Administration à la fin des années 30 dans le cadre du New Deal. L'enfant est au centre d'une rhétorique qui s'appuie sur la dimension vivante et vraie de la photographie et sur son pouvoir émotionnel et il contribue à la définition d'un genre photographique : le documentaire social, dont le statut évolue sous l'effet de la diversification des modes de diffusion (presse, conférences, expositions, musée). / Social photography was born in the United States at the end of the 19th century at a time when children were beginning to occupy a new place in the family. There is a stark contrast between the rich children, who tend to be sanctified and whose innocence is praised through art, and the poor children, who are often exploited and depicted in a picturesque way. While putting poor children at the heart of their concerns, the reformers used photography as a means to promote social progress, in such a way that text and image prove to be indissociable. Such is the case with Jacob A. Riis, a journalist and photographer who worked in New York at the end of the 19th century, and Lewis W. Hine, through his commitment to the struggle against child labor with the National Child Labor Committee (at a time marked by high immigration, rapid industrialization, and chaotic urbanization), as well as the photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration at the end of the 1930s within the New Deal. Children are at the heart of a rhetorical system that exploits the vivid and truthful dimensions of photography and its power to move us. They contribute to the emergence of a new genre of photography, social documentary photography, which evolved according to the various ways in which it was disseminated (the press, conferences, exhibitions, and museums). While the cause of children is most often defended and while they maintain their status as subjects in these photographs, the ways in which they are depicted through different means of communication and dissemination sometimes turn them into mere objects.

Cette étude porte sur les expositions photographiques produites par le gouvernement américain entre 1935 et 1942. Ces expositions avaient pour but de promouvoir les activités entreprises par l’administration Roosevelt dans le cadre de son programme de relance économique. L’étude est constituée de trois grandes parties : la première présente les enjeux politiques et sociaux du New Deal et éclaire les défis auxquels les propagandistes du gouvernement Roosevelt ont été confrontés. Elle montre alors l’intérêt et la fonction que la photographie et l’exposition ont eu dans le programme de propagande. La seconde présente le rôle joué par les expositions universelles dans le développement des techniques scénographiques employées par l’administration. La dernière porte sur les expositions artistiques du gouvernement et sur leur valeur propagandiste. / This study focuses on photographic exhibitions produced by the US government between 1935 and 1942. These exhibitions aimed to publicize the Roosevelt administration’s economic stimulus program. The study is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the political and social issues of the New Deal while shedding light on the challenges faced by the propagandists in the Roosevelt administration, as well as the appeal and function of photography and exhibitions in its propaganda program. The second part considers the role played by world fairsin the development of design techniques employed by the administration. The final section addresses the government’s artistic exhibitions and their value as propaganda.

During the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) developed what is arguably one of the most provocative and far-reaching programs for farm workers undertaken by the U.S. federal government to date. Through the Migratory Labor Camp Program the FSA promised to efficiently funnel workers to fulfill the agricultural industry’s labor demands while providing migrants modern, up-to-date housing and services to alleviate the well-documented substandard conditions many faced. Most scholars have analyzed the camps primarily as sites of labor, capital, and state regulation. Rather than view the camp program as simply a government effort to more efficiently coordinate the nation’s farm labor market, this study argues that the services, programs, and activities FSA officials administered in the camps sought to regulate and transform significant and often intimate social and cultural aspects of migrants’ daily lives. By examining the role of the camps’ architecture, medical clinics, nurseries and elementary schools, as well as the “self-governing” camp committees and councils, this dissertation engages in a gendered analysis of labor to reveal how the federal camps were unique dual-purpose domestic and labor spaces. Analyzing the camps as simultaneous productive and reproductive sites allows us to see them as part of a contested terrain in which complex issues of identity, community, citizenship, and labor were negotiated on a daily basis, affecting U.S. farm labor and race relations well beyond the perimeters of the federal camps. / text

In his 1978 biography of Dorothea Lange, Milton Meltzer appraised Lange's 1936 photography in Utah as nothing more than mundane work done for the benefit of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and not for her own benefit as a photographer. Yet, her work in Utah encapsulates the aspirations, goals, and styles of Lange, and gives insight into her vision as a photographer and representative of the New Deal. Through carefully composed photographs, Lange shows the hardships and hope of life in Utah during the Great Depression. This thesis investigates Lange's photographs in order to gain a greater understanding of the FSA in Utah during the Great Depression, the nature of FSA photography, and her work in general. To accomplish these tasks, it will be necessary to investigate the photographs and their captions, the work of other FSA photographers, local histories, contemporary sources, and FSA scholarship. Using these sources, this thesis attempts to identify reasons why Lange took the photographs she did. Using the historical context under which Lange's photographs were made also allows for an examination of Lange's use of visual editing, or, in other words, her artistic manipulation in creating her own vision of the areas she was assigned to photograph. The manner in which she photographed the small rural towns of Consumers, Widtsoe, and Escalante, was not completely indicative of the towns' true nature, or the towns' reality. Rather, the portraits Lange created were personal visions that supported the FSA and her own beliefs and altruistic ideology.

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