Preserving the 175,000 FSA photographs, one at a time

Here we are in the digital darkroom of the Prints and Photographs Division, where a 16-year-long effort to digitize in high resolution the 175,000 or so Farm Security Administration photographs of the country in the 1930s and ’40s is coming to an end, perhaps by the end of this year. It’s kind of a big deal. The FSA’s work (also carried out under the names of the Resettlement Administration and the Office of War Information) was intended to be daily publicity and propaganda for New Deal-era social programs that ran from 1935 to 1944. But over time, the images became some of the most iconic documentary photographs in American history, and the photographers some of the most revered. There is Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” Arthur Rothstein’s Dust Bowl-defining images, Russell Lee’s Southside Chicago photo of “Negro Boys on Easter Morning,” and dozens of others, including work by Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee and Jack Delano. They have been used for decades in books, documentaries, feature films, photography retrospectives, museum collections and endless newspaper, magazine and online stories. The Library issued its “Fields of Vision” photobook series in 2008, chronicling the work of several of these photographers. Still, the…

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