Managing the Magnitude of the Great Depression

Abstract

This chapter examines viewer responses to the Farm Security Administration (FSA) exhibit at the First International Photographic Exposition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York City from April 18 through 24, 1938. The First International Photographic Exposition featured more than 3,000 photographs representing all genres of photography. As the organizing committee wrote in its introduction to the catalog of exhibits and programs, “Photography today is the most catholic of the applied sciences and the livest of the arts. Lucid in its application, universal in its appeal, it is making America a picture-minded people—a people in whom the visual sense grows increasingly more dominant as an educational and emotional influence.” This chapter first describes 1930s photography and Americans' picture-mindedness before discussing viewer comments on the FSA exhibit. It shows that those comments offer insight into how viewers responded to the immediate reading problem posed by the FSA photographs: how to make sense of images of want at a time of economic, political, and social crisis in the United States.