Customer Reviews

The Depression Years as Photographed by Arthur Rothstein (Dover Pictorial Archives)

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Arthur Rothstein became a photography at Columbia University where he met Roy Stryker, a professor economics. After graduation, Stryker hired Rothstein and others to document what became the Farm Security Administration. It was while working for the FSA that Rothstein became famous for his photographs of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, including the famous shot of the family running to their half buried home in the dust storm. Ironically, one of his other famous images, of a cow skull in the desert, was controversial because the shot was totally set up. "The Depression Years" includes 120 photographs, with captions of enduring images of the unemployed and ragged children. If you are interested in more of the background of Rothstein and his work, then check out "Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered" by James Curtis, if you can find a copy. Rothstein went on to become a staff photograph for "Look" and eventually the magazine's director of photography until it folded, at which point he taught photography at his alma mater. Rothstein is simply the definitive photographer of the Dust Bowl, as important to our cultural understanding as John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Rath" or the ballads of Woody Guthrie.

This book is very exciting. It covers the depression from all over the country, the pictures are from New Mexico to Maine & Nevada to Florida. You really get a feel for the desperation that must have been felt. I really enjoyed looking through this.

Wonderful book for recording a very difficult era. Remembering history is necessary so we don't repeat it. And, we are. Many of the problems of the dust bowl years and the financial depression are happening right now but they are hidding in plain sight. The middle class is becoming smaller, incomes are going down for most Americans, except the Bill Gates and Oprahs. Farmers are leaving the farms while a few farming conglomerates are buying most of the productive land. The fertility of the land keeps going down and people are losing their homes. Other countries are passing us and leaving us behind but still we ship them our jobs and money. Remember.

I used this book to research Depression era clothing for a play and found the photos really intriguing and useful. I only wish there had been about 3 times more of them.