Arthur Rothstein North Dakota 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.
Going to Church to Pray for Rain, Near Grassy Butte, North Dakota, 1936. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
It’s difficult to overstate the intensity of the heatwave that gripped much of the US in July and August of 1936.
Eleven states including North Dakota experienced their highest-ever temperatures that sizzling summer.
Many of these records remain unbroken or were broken only by our frequent twenty-first century heatwaves.
In the spring of 1936, Arthur Rothstein had documented horrific Dust Bowl conditions in the southern Great Plains.
As summer advanced, he drove north into the scorching heat on assignment for the US Resettlement Administration.
An official in the agency’s Washington office wrote to him on July 14, “Your decision to go into the drought area is [very good news].”
The letter adds a few supplementary details to his assignment. “[Be] on the lookout for these pictures (1) Livestock needing water. (2) Needy families—people evacuating. (3) Pictures of children. (4) Crops stunted, burned up. (5) Farms closed down.”
Rothstein found those images, plus one more that satisfied a final request. (6) “[Show people] going to or coming from church.”
This Arthur Rothstein exhibit is made possible by the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project.
