The photographs in the Library of Congress' Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) collection provide a unique and comprehensive view of American life from 1935 to 1944. This government photography project, headed by Roy E. Stryker, employed many of the 20th-century's bestknown photographers, such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein and Carl Mydans. Initially conceived to document government loans to farmers and their resettlement in suburban communities, the scope of the project expanded to create a visual record of agricultural workers in the South, Mid-West and Western United States. Later, Stryker's photographers recorded both rural and urban centres throughout the country as the nation prepared for World War II. Each volume in this brand new series, published under the collective title Fields of Vision, presents 50 striking images by an individual FSA/OWI photographer. While most are black and white negatives, colour transparencies do exist and are among the lesser-known images in the collection. These are included in select volumes to give a complete sense of the photographer's work. In addition, each volume features an introduction to the work of the photographer by a leading contemporary author or writer, as well as a biography. Together, the volumes recreate for the viewer a picture of life prior to World War II and communicate a foreboding sense of the changes that would follow. AUTHOR: Nicholas Lemann has published five books, most recently Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006). He has written extensively for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Slate and American Heritage and has worked in documentary television with Blackside, Inc., Frontline, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC. 53 colour illustrations
