Arthur Rothstein Idaho 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.
Son of sheep rancher in Oneida County, Idaho, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
Excessive and prolonged heat and drought, relentless swarms of insects, and what seemed to be a biblical plague of jackrabbits who were scouring the land for food, made farm life very
difficult for many in the Rocky Mountain states during the Great Depression.
Merely sustaining one’s farm required ingenuity, hard work, a simplified lifestyle and a lot of good luck.
Many farms did not have furnaces, electric lights or indoor plumbing.
Typically, farm families raised most of their own food – eggs and chickens, milk and beef from their own cows.
Some raised sheep for meat and wool and bees for honey.
Everybody had a vegetable garden and put-up canned goods for the winter.
When times got really lean, farm families raised rabbits to put meat on the dinner table.
Unlike city folks, farm life meant you probably wouldn’t go hungry.
New Deal government programs helped many farmers make it through the 1930s.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Resettlement Administration (RA) which became the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) directly supported farm life.
This Arthur Rothstein exhibit is made possible by the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.