Art & Art History ETDs
Publication Date
7-29-2025
Abstract
The photographs made by the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) are a benchmark in the history of documentary photography. Created by approximately twenty photographers between 1935 and 1943, under the direction of Roy Emerson Stryker, these images are a lasting visual record of the Great Depression and America’s mobilization for World War II. During the FSA documentary project’s active years, its images circulated widely in the popular media, but publications predominantly chose photographs of White subjects, despite the fact that the FSA documented multiple racial and ethnic groups, including Black, Indigenous, Japanese, and Mexican Americans. Recent scholarship has stated without evidence that the reason FSA photographs depicting people of color did not appear before the public eye is because Stryker restricted their distribution, citing their absence in the popular media as definitive proof. In fact, Stryker actively promoted and circulated images of America’s diverse population through an innovative print distribution system called the Duplicate File. I argue that popular media outlets were reluctant to publish the complex portrait produced by FSA photographers, who pictured their subjects as individuals with agency. Instead, editors and publishers often based their selections on image convention, entrenched racial and ethnic prejudices, and the era’s established perceptions of Whiteness, all to confirm an “image” of particular groups.
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Art History
Level of Degree
Doctoral
Department Name
UNM Department of Art and Art History
First Committee Member (Chair)
Kevin Mulhearn
Second Committee Member
Susanne Anderson-Riedel
Third Committee Member
Kirsten Pai Buick
Fourth Committee Member
Laura Katzman
Recommended Citation
Appel, Mary Jane. "Picturing Race in the New Deal: FSA Photographs and Print Media Politics." (2025). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/arth_etds/240