Some two dozen iconic photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Russell Lee are now on display at The Image Flow. The images are part of the Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, which forms an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. The project was headed by Roy E. Stryker, a former economics instructor at Columbia University, and includes a total of about 175,000 black and white film negatives and transparencies. It was transferred to the Library of Congress in 1944.
Digital files of images by these three incredible photographers were downloaded from the Library of Congress website with permission, and retouched at The Image Flow and printed for exhibition.
I have long been fascinated with the enormous number of incredible images available for viewing on the Library of Congress website. I have spent uncounted hours over the years just looking at some of the history caught on film as well as some of the oddities exposed by a wide range of photographers. Needless to say some of these very important images will remain classics forever.
In an attempt to share this overwhelming resource with The Flow followers, I chose three photographers whose work resonates its true photographic value. The original three photographers I considered curating were not the three I decided to exhibit.
I stumbled on the amazing collection by Russell Lee, who along with Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, was employed by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. Their mission was to record the era, the dust bowl, the migrant workers, and the living conditions of those struggling to rebound from the Great Depression.
The photographic history currently hanging on the walls of the gallery at The Image Flow is truly something to behold. I believe each of the three photographers represented here would be very proud to see their images hanging together in a group exhibition.
— Stuart Schwartz
