Little girl and grandmother (?) with hose, Detroit, Michigan, July 1942, by Arthur S. Siegel for U.S. Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos).
Category: vintage landscape
Washington, D.C.
Small front gardens and a sidewalk cafe on 17th Street, N.W., between H and I Streets, August 1973, by Dick Swanson for DOCUMERICA, via The U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr.
(Click on the image for a better view.)
None of these buildings remain today. The current view (from the ground) is here.
DOCUMERICA was an photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1972 to 1977, it hired over 100 photographers to “document subjects of environmental concern.” They created an archive of about 80,000 images.
In addition to recording damage to the nation’s landscapes, the project captured “the era’s trends, fashions, problems, and achievements,” according to the Archives, which held an exhibit of the photos, “Searching for the Seventies,” in 2013.
Caret, Virginia
Blandfield garden, Caret, Virginia, 1935, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos).
Coffee County, Alabama
A repeat post from January 2014. . .
“James F. Drigger’s farmhouse. Coffee County, Alabama,” August 1941, by John Collier, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The large plants in front of the vines and along the walk are Ricinus communis or castor beans.
They and the flowers make a nice approach to the lined-up open front and back doors.
John Collier was working for the Farm Security Administration when he took this photo. The Drigger family was receiving assistance to raise chickens under the “Food for Defense” program.
The Sunday porch: Houston, Texas
Mexican-American home in Houston, Texas, April 1973, by Danny Lyon for the DOCUMERICA project, via The U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr (all three photos here).
Lyon made a series of 21 black and white photographs in East Texas in 1973. “They document the environments remaining from the 19th century in terms of architecture, commerce and lifestyles,” according to their original captions. “The pictures also compare the contemporary city showing displacement of the unique by the ordinary and noting current urban problems.”
Above: houses in the Fifth Ward, Houston. Click on the images to enlarge them.
DOCUMERICA was an photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1972 to 1977, it hired over 100 photographers to “document subjects of environmental concern.” They created an archive of about 80,000 images.
In addition to recording damage to the nation’s landscapes, the project captured “the era’s trends, fashions, problems, and achievements,” according to the Archives, which held an exhibit of the photos, “Searching for the Seventies,” in 2013.
enclos*ure 