John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Affrilachians: The FSA Photography of Ben Shahn & Marion Post Wolcott

I'm not an Affrilachian, but I'd award myself the title if I could. My credentials look pretty good. I've spent most of my adult life on the fringes of Appalachia, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Charlottesville, Virginia. I've got deep roots, on my mother's side, in Clifton Forge, Virginia, which is... Read more →

Review: John Raeburn, "Ben Shahn's American Scene: Photographs, 1938"

In 1938, Ben Shahn traveled the back roads of central Ohio, hoping to discover the "average American." He was on a three-month assignment for Roy Stryker's legendary photo documentary project, which was a unit of the federal government's Farm Security Administration [FSA]. He'd worked as a photographer for Stryker on... Read more →

Ben Shahn Hated Buckeye Lake (But Thought the Rest of Ohio was OK)

A beautiful lake, a warm summer's day, the hint of romance in the air... As wonderful all that sounds, it didn't make Ben Shahn very happy. Visiting central Ohio's Buckeye Lake, in 1938, as part of an assignment from the Farm Security Administration to document the lives of "average Americans,"... Read more →

Convergences, 1: Ben Shahn and Constance Stuart Larrabee

Sometimes things come together in wonderful ways. This post was born out of an email exchange that I had with Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly and a comment that he made on this blog. A couple of months ago, I wrote about a photo-essay that he had done on poor whites... Read more →

Review: "Hard Luck Blues: Roots Music Photographs from the Great Depression"

In the 1930s and '40s, photographers employed by the federal government's now-legendary Farm Security Administration [FSA] created the most significant and, perhaps, most beautiful of all American photo archives. The FSA's Historical Unit, which was established to document and promote the Roosevelt administration's New Deal policies, far transcended its narrow... Read more →

How Photography Lies, Even When It's Telling the Truth: FSA Photography & the Great Depression

Think about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and images like the one below will spring into your head -- a photograph of a homeless mother and her children who appear to have nothing to cling to but their clothes, their car, and each other. It seems to sum... Read more →

Ben Shahn, with Leica and Right-Angle Viewfinder

Ben Shahn loved his Leica. To be more precise, he loved what he could do with it, especially when outfitted with a right-angle viewfinder. In my last post, I talked about Shahn's 1935 encounter with a traveling medicine show in a small town in Tennessee and showed several of the... Read more →