Aerial views and farm security administration photography

Abstract

Between September 1939 and April 1940 Arthur Rothstein and John Vachon, photographers for the US Government's Farm Security Administration (FSA), made three trips to Grundy County, Iowa to make photographs of Midwestern agrarian life. During these excursions the two men wandered along the streets of small towns and the furrows of farmers' fields taking snapshots that documented the events, places and patterns of rural life (figures 1, 2). In addition, during the cold winter month of February 1940, Rothstein again visited this rural landscape, this time from the cockpit of a small airplane. From vantage points high above the land he made scores more photographs of the town of Grundy Center and its environs (figures 3, 4). These aerial images presented broad visions of the network of farms, roads and fields that composed the local landscape. In doing so, these views served as visual complements to the up-close, personal photographs of farmers and town residents taken from ground level.

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