Arthur Rothstein Texas Photographs
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.
Nursery school playground. Farm Security Administration camp, Robstown, Texas, 1942. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
In early 1942, FSA photographer Arthur Rothstein made a record of life at several of the agency’s Texas migrant-labor camps.
The FSA sent Rothstein on this assignment to Texas just weeks after America entered WW II.
President Roosevelt had recognized that agricultural production—and the well-being of essential workers and their families—were now matters of military concern.
When a family stayed at an FSA camp, they had access to medical and dental care. The children were ensured proper nutrition and attended nursery or elementary school.
On this assignment Rothstein visited this government-run camp on the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi and others in Sinton to the north, in the Rio Grande Valley, and in Weslaco near McAllen.
He also visited Texas A&M at College Station to document the school’s enormous contributions to the Allied war effort.
During WW II, the University sent more than twenty thousand combat troops into service and produced more officers for active duty than the Army and Naval Academies combined.
Cattle brands, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein.
Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
Since ancient times people have used brands—like the examples decorating this museum entryway—to signify ownership of livestock.
Cattle brands appeared in Egyptian tomb paintings as early as 2700 BC. Spanish explorers brought the tradition to the New World in the 16th century.
Texas ranchers have been registering brands since 1836. When Arthur Rothstein photographed this museum in 1936, federal New Deal programs were funding its expansion, and the creation of historical murals for the institution’s Pioneer Hall.
The Works Progress Administration (or “WPA”) and the Public Works of Art Project (or “PWAP”) commissioned four new murals.
The museum, on the campus of what is now West Texas A&M University, has continued to expand and is now the largest history museum in Texas.
The Panhandle Plains Historical Society is more than 100 years old, but its mission remains, “… To collect the record of life here and hand this on to the children of the future.”
Heavy black clouds of dust rising over the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo, Texas, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
In 1936, 20-year-old Arthur Rothstein documented a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
The Dust Bowl was an environmental and human disaster centered in parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico.
During the wheat-boom of WW I, farmers had plowed-up 100 million acres of deep-rooted, drought-resistant prairie grasses.
When the periodic cycle of Great Plains drought recurred in the 1930s, the soil was left vulnerable to erosion.
A series of savage windstorms stripped away the topsoil, raising boiling clouds of sand and dirt.
Fine particles of dust penetrated every building, sickening people and livestock. Many succumbed to “dust pneumonia.”
Rehabilitation client’s son, Kaufman County, Texas, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
During the Great Depression farmwives typically controlled household accounts and home production.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA), a New Deal agency and base of operations for Rothstein’s Photo Unit, was created to combat rural poverty with loans, education, health care and resettlement.
The self-sufficiency of farm families who obtained loans from the FSA was encouraged with distribution of informational and instructive “Live at Home” bulletins as well as visits from Female Home Demonstrators. They were provided by the Federal Home Demonstration
Program whose agents were missionaries of modernization, introducing new appliances such as the pressure-cooker, especially useful in preserving food.
Agents provided instruction in various aspects of home economics including canning techniques. Rural wives “put up” pickles, jams, jellies and compotes, vegetables—even meat—to see the family through the winter.
A cupboard or cellar filled with preserved or “canned” fruits and vegetables supported good health during the Great Depression.
This Arthur Rothstein exhibit is made possible by the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.