Evans and the Farm Security Administration

In 1932, even before the existence of the Farm Security Administration, President Roosevelt promised to bring aid to “the forgotten man at the bottom end of the pyramid,” as he stated in a pre-election radio address. This forgotten man was virtually synonymous with the poor agricultural communities of the rural South (Baldwin 48). Later on in the Depression Era, the Farm Security Administration (originally the Resettlement Administration) Historical Unit was established. The Unit was composed of photographers hired to produce pictures that would help to illustrate and explain the unfortunate situation of the poor (Szarkowski). The Farm Security Administration (FSA) photography program was intended in another sense as a source of New Deal propaganda to persuade citizens to help the depicted poor by supporting New Deal programs (Guimond 101). In either case, the photos produced by the FSA photographers provided an accurate portrayal of the effects of the Depression on real American families (Guimond 109).

Evans was hired for the FSA on October 9th, 1935, to permanently join the staff of photographers and hold the title of Senior Information Specialist. According to Stryker, Evans’ job was to “illustrate factual and interpretive news releases and other informational material upon all problems, progress and activities of the Resettlement administration” (Mellow 269). Evans was specifically asked to portray “the relationship of the land to cultural decay” through his photographs (Mellow 287). Though he contributed over four-hundred photos, Evans was actually the least productive of all the FSA photographers based on numbers alone (Rosenheim 105).

Evans struggled to balance the political function of the organization with his own artistic goals. He wanted his photographs to be “literate, authoritative, transcendent” (Szarkowski). Evans was interested in capturing contrasts and juxtapositions in his work, to portray the motley combination of elements that formed current American culture (Guimond 134). Because of their different perspectives, Stryker and Evans often disagreed with each other. Stryker saw the photographers as working to fix the nation’s problems, while Evans saw his function as an artist to simply describe the life he saw (Szarkowski). It is likely, however, that Evans and Stryker could agree on one sentiment: Evan’s desire to reveal “a territory which had been previously kept in the shadow of the news item” (Cartier-Bresson 44).

Evans made another significant contribution to Depression-Era photography through his collaboration with James Agee for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. For the project, Evans photographed farmers and sharecroppers in the south while Agee composed the descriptions of their daily lives. The portraits Evans produced for the book have become the definitive images of the Depression Era, namely those of the Burroughs Family from Hale County, Alabama (“Walker Evans”). Evans summarized the message of the book in his statement regarding the photographed families: “The writing they induced is, among other things, the reflection of one resolute, private rebellion” (Agee, Evans xii).