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Category: FSA/OWI

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Slice Up the Fruitcake

Posted by: Jan Grenci

This week, we’re looking at something I don’t like very much – fruitcake. This seasonal sweet treat has never appealed to me. But while preparing for a recent Flickr album featuring images of butter and baking, I stumbled upon three fruitcake photos that caught my eye and deserved detailed views. First up, a Russell Lee …

Untitled photo, possibly related to: Loading household goods into cars and trailer. Two families getting ready to move on in search of work picking fruit. Berrien County, Michigan. Photograph by John Vachon, 1940 July. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c17741

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, but You’ve Got to Have One or Two to Start With

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The following is a guest post by Taren Ouellette, Digital Library Specialist, Prints & Photographs Division. With 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection was a U.S. Government effort to capture scenes of American life during the 1930s and 1940s with such topics as the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Revisiting Rights-Free: Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Color Photographs

Posted by: Melissa Lindberg

The Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) color photographs provide a vivid glimpse into life in the United States from 1939 to 1945 — a period more often viewed through a monochromatic lens. If you are familiar with the FSA/OWI photographs at the Library of Congress, chances are that the first images that come …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

A Small Texas Town on a March Afternoon in 1940

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The following is a guest post by Mary Jane Appel, photo historian and author of the recently published Russell Lee: A Photographer’s Life and Legacy (Liveright, in association with the Library of Congress, 2021). When Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Russell Lee drove through the small town of San Marcos, Texas on a sunny afternoon …