Picturing Texas

This book focuses on some of the most famous photographs ever taken: the Farm Security Administration's images of Dust Bowl Texans. But there is much more to the FSA photographs than is commonly believed. From 1935 to 1943 - the critical years of the Great Depression and World War II - the photographers in the federal government's Farm Security Administration (and later the Office of War Information) documented America, especially Texas, in all its vast complexity. Some of the most famous names in documentary photography, including Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Arthur Rothstein, took more than five thousand photographs in Texas, more than in any other state. In addition to the well-known pictures of rural poverty and the Dust Bowl, these remarkable artists captured a rich panorama of everyday life in Texas's rural areas, small towns, and big cities. By the time they were done, there were few areas and aspects of Texas left undocumented. Robert L. Reid's text traces the history of the FSA and the OWI and discusses the photographers and their work. The book also presents more than two hundred magnificent duotone photographs in chapters on cotton, cattle, oil, cities and towns, recreation and leisure, the Dust Bowl, World War II, and other themes. Readers will be moved by the vast array of images of town meetings and rodeos, down-and-out farmers and prosperous businessmen, beer joints and factories, black and brown and white.