Arthur Rothstein Nebraska Photograph
Arthur Rothstein made some of the most significant documentary photographs ever taken of rural and small-town America.
These images were created during his years traveling throughout the nation on assignment for the US Farm Security Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” agencies that restored and rebuilt an America devastated by the Great Depression.
In 1940, Rothstein joined the staff of Look magazine.
With the start of the WWll, Rothstein completed photojournalistic assignments for the US Army Signal Corps in China, Burma, and India.
After a short assignment for the United Nations, he returned to Look magazine, where he served as director of photography for 25 years during the Golden Age of post-war photo magazines.
He then held the same position for Parade magazine for 15 years, until his death in 1985.
During his years in magazine photojournalism Rothstein continued his own work, teaching, writing nine books as well as numerous newspaper and magazine columns on photography.
His photographs of America during the Great Depression were some of the most widely-published photographs of the 20th century, and are held in the collections of major museums around the world.
Farmer planting corn. Lancaster County, Nebraska, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
Soon after his inauguration in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt called Congress into session and enacted the AAA, the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
Congress balanced supply and demand of farm commodities so that prices would support a decent purchasing power for farmers.
This idea, outlined in the AAA, was a statistical model called “parity” which was an equity or balance concept.
Parity achieved if farm income was keeping up with farm costs.
High farm prices encouraged more productivity and low prices resulted from overproduction.
The parity model was supposed to balance the welfare of farmers in relation to the welfare of others.
AAA controlled the supply of seven “basic crops” corn, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, tobacco and milk, by offering payments to farmers for taking some of their land out of productivity, by not planting a crop.
Although farmers did not like the government telling them what they could or could not plant, it was hard to resist that government check.
This Arthur Rothstein exhibit is made possible by the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.