Collections

The Great Depression lasted from the 1920s and through part of the 1940s. During this time, millions of Americans became unemployed, were evicted from their homes, and relied on what little assistance the United States government could provide. It was not until Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that things began to look up. The New Deal introduced many agencies, each with a job to help bolster the economy and aid the American people. Consisting of 450 photo slides, the images in the collection were chosen from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information Collections in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Photographed between 1935 and 1943, the original educational slide set was produced in 1979. Photographers include Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Langue, Roy Stryker, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Theodor Jung, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, and many more. The images encompass the entirety of the continental United States with five photographs taken in Florida. Work camps, homeless populations, ghost towns, Japanese Internment Camps, and agricultural communities are only some of the subjects that are the focus of the collection.