Drifting soil covering chicken house and grove, South Dakota, 1935.
Rosebud Photo Co., Gregory, S.D.;
Library of Congress page.

Corn, drought-stricken and eaten off by grasshoppers. Near Russellville, Arkansas. August 1936; photo by Dorothea Lange; Library of Congress page.

Migrant laborer’s children. Mother was thirty-two years old, had had eleven children, two sets of twins, six are now living. She and her husband lost jobs in packinghouse because they cut down in help or closed after the “freeze-out.” The older boy said “This little ‘uns fell off so since we come here. It was so fat before. It’s had colitis so bad. My daddy didn’t know we was comin’ to the wrong place this time. We’ve been lots of places. I don’t like it here so well but I reckon we’ll have to stay a smart while. My daddy had to turn back the car. He’d paid a lot off on it but he didn’t git enough work here. Now we can’t go nowheres else.” Belle Glade, Florida.

February 1939;  photo by Marion Post Wolcott; Library of Congress page.

Art on Sunday #15

Are you hopeful?
Painting includes the ruins of the World Trade Center, New York City,
following the September 11th terrorist attack.
Aurora Valero, Artist.

• Exhibited: Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress, 2002.
• Aurora Valero, Artist. Are you hopeful? Dec, 2001. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2002710543/. (Accessed September 09, 2016.)
• Forms part of: the Exit Art Gallery Reactions Collection: A Global Response to the 9/11 Attacks.
• Publication and other forms of distribution: Permitted. Rights to works in Exit Art’s “Reactions” Exhibition Collection are held by Exit Art, which has stipulated that “… we desire that the materials be free for use by the public.”

While The Bitter Years was an exhibition of over 200 images of rural America intended to illustrate the poverty and desperation of the time, this image by John Collier, Jr. was taken during a project with a very different purpose, which Collier described briefly in a 1965 interview at his home.¹

“Finally, I was sent to the coal fields of Pittsburgh, not that there were any documents to show poverty, but to photograph the most modern way to get coal out of the ground. And I spent a murky month in Pittsburgh working in the coal mines doing a highly technological job of recording culture underground. It was a very exciting experience. It still was far a field from my involvement. I preferred that assignment; it was a truly typical one, an exciting one.”

The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.

Image located and snipped by online search September 5, 2016 from ep.yimg.com/ay/artbook/sneak-peek-the-bitter-years-review…

This image was taken by John Collier when he was working for the Farm Services Administration and is in the public domain.

Endnotes:

1. An interview with John Collier at his home on Muir Beach, Sausalito, California; January 18, 1965. The interviewer is Richard K. Doud. – American Suburb X, Accessed September 5, 2016

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Road Closed, Flooded Picnic Shelter
National Archives and Records Administration
originally from EPA Stock Photograph Files
USEPA photo by Eric Vance
October 30, 2012

Exit78 photo series: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (004)

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

“No Gas” Signs Were a Common Sight in Oregon During the Fall of 1973, Such as at This Station in Lincoln City Along the Coast. Many Stations Closed Earlier, Opened Later and Shut Down on the Weekends
October 1973
National Archives
Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA

Exit78 photo series: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (003)

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Rockville Fair, Maryland, 1928.
Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/npc2008013854/.
(Accessed September 01, 2016.)

Exit78 photo series: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (002)

Dust storm near Williston, North Dakota; October 1937; photo by Russell Lee; Library of Congress image

Dust bowl farmer raising fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand. Cimarron County, Oklahoma; April 1936; photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress image.

Liberal (vicinity), Kan. Soil blown by dust bowl winds piled up in large drifts on a farm; March 1936; photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress image.

I realized a few days ago that the 15th year anniversary of the September 11th attacks was approaching and started looking at – and saving – images from then that are in the public domain.  I initially had no plan on what to do with them until yesterday, when I decided to do a short video.

Much has happened in the years since the planes flew into the World Trade Center.  The world seems far different, with terror attacks occurring all too frequently around the world, terror attacks that gain little or nothing for those who plot and plan them.

The first several images are from several years to a month before the attack.  They simply show New York City with the twin towers still standing.

The music track used is “September 11, 2001 – Theme from the Last Castle” by Jerry Goldsmith.  According to YouTube, videos using this track are viewable everywhere except Germany.

Image used in this video are public domain, accessed from the Library of Congress or the U.S. National Archives.  Images are viewable in a Flickr album at https://www.flickr.com/photos/exit78/albums/72157672313859131.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Somewhere in the middle of the country where gas rationing hasn’t hit yet
September 1942,
Office of War Information photo by Ann Rosener

Exit78 photo series: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (001)