Images of the Great Depression: A Photographic Essay

Robert L. Stevens and Jared A. Fogel

Take me back to the article.

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
16 (Fall 2001). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2001, Organization of American Historians

Photos

Migrant mother. "Destitute Pea Pickers in California." Nipomo, California, February 1936. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-95653.)

At the beach. "June in January." Miami Beach, Florida, [March 1939 ?]. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF33-030466-M1.)

Migratory Mexican field worker's home on the edge of a pea field. Imperial Valley, California, March 1937. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-T01-016425-C.)

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-004052.)

Houses near the Nebraska Power Company Plant. Omaha, Nebraska, November 1938. Photograph by John Vachon. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-T01-008878-D.)

Employment agency. Miami, Florida, January 1939. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-050772-E.)

Artelia Bendolph, girl at Gees Bend. April 1937. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-025359-D.)

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Connecticut, September 1940. Photograph by Jack Delano. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-041573-D.)

Willie S. Pettway, descendant of a former slave of the Pettways. Gees Bend, Alabama, April 1937. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-025393-D.)

A meal on the sidewalk at the beach. "June in January," Miami Beach, Florida, [March 1939 ?]. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF33-030493-M2.)

Sunday evening. Colorado, 1940. Photograph by Edward Wall Norton. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Christmas dinner in the home of Earl Pauley. Near Smithfield, Iowa, 1936. Photograph by Russell Lee. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34-010124-D.)

Robert L. Stevens is a professor of education at Georgia Southern University. Jared A. Fogel is director of Fogel Art, LLC. Both authors are frequent contributors to Social Education, a publication of the National Council for the Social Studies, and have in print The Great Depression: An Artist's View. In addition, they have just completed Crying Out in Protest: The Formative Years of the Art of Seymour Fogel.