Tag: Farm Security Administration photographers

Vintage landscape: harvest

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

A few beautiful Kodachrome images of the season. . .

Harvest, 1940s, Library of Congress“Exhibit of crops and vegetables at the Pie Town, New Mexico, Fair,” 1940, by Russell Lee.

The story of Pie Town and of the photos Lee took there is here, in Smithsonian Magazine.

Harvest, 1940s, Library of CongressMrs. Jim Norris canning vegetables, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940, by Russell Lee. (You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Harvest, 1940s, Library of Congress“Display of home-canned food,” between 1941 and 1945, photographer not noted.

All three images were taken for the U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information on the then new Kodachrome color transparency film.  All via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Oh! for a thousand pumpkin seeds,
To plant for my son John;
He says that pumpkin pies are good
When the winter time comes on.

— Robert Charles O’Hara Benjamin, from “The Farmer’s Soliloquy“

Vintage landscape: Alabama garden

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

Drigger home, 1941 Coffee Co., Alabama, via Library of Congress“James F. Drigger’s farmhouse. Coffee County, Alabama,” August 1941, by John Collier, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This photo was taken in the same county as yesterday’s farmhouse with quilts. I think those are papaya plants in front of the porch vines and in the lower left corner. Nope, they’re Ricinus communis  or castor beans.  Thanks Melissa!

They and the flowers make a nice approach to the lined-up 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: Omaha, Nebraska

Cindy at enclos*ure17 Comments

The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: Omaha, Nebraska, 1938, by John Vachon, Library of Congress“Lady tending her flower box, Omaha, Nebraska,” (probably October) 1938, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

(Click on the image to get a better look.)

The photographer, John Vachon, was on his first solo assignment for the Farm Security Administration in October and November 1938.  In addition to taking pictures of rural agricultural projects  in Nebraska, he was tasked with recording scenes of  life in Omaha for a book by Atlantic magazine writer George Leighton.

There is an interesting discussion of his Omaha work here.  His pictures in the city captured “portraits of Depression victims and scenes of comfortable everyday life,” like the one above.

Vachon later worked for Look magazine for 25 years, and he won a Guggenheim fellowship in 1973, two years before his death at age 60.