Farm Security Administration

CTL-E-5242 · Organization · other · 1937–1942 (agency); photography unit 1935–1944

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

The Farm Security Administration was a New Deal agency created in 1937, successor to the Resettlement Administration, charged with aiding poor farmers during the Great Depression. It is remembered above all for its photography unit, directed by Roy E. Stryker: a small team — among them Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and Gordon Parks — sent across the country to document American life. The unit outlived the agency's name, passing to the Office of War Information in 1942 and working until 1944. Its file, transferred to the Library of Congress in 1944, holds about 175,000 black-and-white negatives and around 107,000 prints — an extensive pictorial record of the United States between 1935 and 1944. The unit's Chicago work — Lee's 1941 South Side series and Delano's 1942–43 railroad photographs — supplies a foundational layer of CultureTechLens's Cited Photo Archive.

The record

• Also known as: FSA

Notes

STAGED 2026-10-15 (packet chicago-first) — BRANCH-SURFACED OPTIONAL, like Haslip in branch-two: not one of the four the founder named. It is staged because both photographers' defining affiliation runs to it, its own sourcing (Library of Congress, primary) clears the floor on its own, and without it Lee and Delano enter as two unconnected leaves. Founder may merge four or five. The entity is the agency; its photography unit's longer life (1935–1944, across three agencies) is carried in the era field and text, not hidden.

Referenced by

• Jack Delano — affiliated with → this record
• Russell Lee — affiliated with → this record

Sources

• Library of Congress — 'About this Collection,' FSA/OWI Black-and-White Negatives (unit under Roy E. Stryker across RA 1935–1937, FSA 1937–1942, OWI 1942–1944; ~175,000 negatives, ~107,000 prints; transferred to LOC 1944) (loc.gov/collections/fsa-owi-black-and-white-negatives/about-this-collection/) (primary source)
• Texas State University — Russell Lee Collection guide (the Resettlement Administration project became the Farm Security Administration in 1937) (docs.gato.txst.edu) (primary source)

Record CTL-E-5242 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (2 primary) · 2 mapped relationships · CTL research: PPL-001.
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