Out of One, Many

Regionalism in FSA Photography

"We introduced America to Americans"
--Roy Stryker, Historical Section chief, Information Division, FSA

"From its founding, the new nation was a nation of regions"
--Edward Ayers, American Regionalism

Stryker's presumptuous statement quickly begs the question "which Americans?" Clearly the FSA photographs were revolutionary in their shunning of celebrities to depict "the folk," but, when Stryker says "Americans," does the FSA head mean the sharecroppers in Alabama, the slum-ridden in Boston, the wealthy vacationers in Miami, the down-home denizens of the Virginia mountains, the displaced farmers of Oklahoma, the Wall Street businessman, or the labor camp workers in California? As Stryker's photographers would learn as they traveled the nation, the differences between the groups clearly are myriad. Each boast different dress, different tools, and somehow different-unique--faces. Coming from varied areas of the country, the groups also possess disparate geographic backgrounds, which have shaped them and they in turn have shaped. If, in fact, all the FSA photographers had been as determined to capture truth--and eschew propaganda--as Stryker purported, these would be just about all the differences; however, even a brief look at the FSA files shows this is not the case. Whether the famed photographers employed subtle techniques such as a shift in the angle of the camera or more blatant ones like the removal of background objects, which they did not believe fit the mood, they often strove to achieve not just the image as they saw it, but the image as they felt it and believed it should be felt.

Although each expert and photographer boasts a slightly different opinion on documentary photography, Ansel Adams provides us with a particularly useful definition, calling it "the type of photography which interprets the social scene in the way of commentary" (qtd. in Featherstone 1-2). To Adams and other viewers, documentary photographers were not just like Dorothea Lange remarked "after the truth," they were after a particular reaction from the people observing the photograph. Being that documentary photography's primary appeal is to the emotions, it oddly enough proved a particularly manipulative vehicle, especially because the 1930s audiences that were eagerly grabbing the first issues of Life magazine off the racks lacked many of the tools--and much of the cynicism--needed to read the photographs (Stott). As John Rogers Puckett remarks, "the illusion of truth in a photograph is very convincing" [emphasis added] (16).

Historians that herald the decade of the 1930s as the one in which America forged its national culture have added much to an understanding of 20th century America. It is the goal of this project, however, to demonstrate that even in Stryker's work--a project charged with creating a national identity--regional identity could never be fully subverted. America, even today, is a constant negotiation of more local and national ways, and the American ever defies conventional definition; the FSA project, for its critical timing and its great breadth, provides an excellent set of lenses through which to view these phenomena.