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Kismet – Making Connections through Pictures

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Recently I had one of those days when Prints & Photographs Division collections intersected with my personal life.  I came home to an exclamation from my daughter, who was trolling the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for a school assignment: “Mom, the Office of War Information photographed my high school during World War II!”

Mrs. Rustan combing her young son's hair. Rustan brothers' farm, Dickens, Iowa
Mrs. Rustan combing her young son’s hair, Rustan brothers’ farm, Dickens, Iowa. Photo by Russell Lee, 1936 Dec. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a21348

The Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection has long spurred these kinds of personal discoveries, because the photographe