Arthur Rothstein by Russell Lee, Washington, D.C., 1938

Arthur Rothstein (b. 1915 in New York City – d.1985 in New Rochelle, New York) was a Jewish American photographer. Image File history File links Arthur_Rothstein_8a22587r. ... Image File history File links Arthur_Rothstein_8a22587r. ... Russell Lee Russell Lee (1903, Ottawa, Illinois - 1986, Austin, Texas) was an American photographer. ... Nickname: Big Apple, City that never Sleeps, Gotham Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1613 Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area    - City 1,214. ... New Rochelle City Hall New Roc City New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County in the U.S. state of New York, 16 miles (26 km) from Grand Central Terminal in New York City and 2 miles north of the border with The Bronx. ... A Jewish American (also commonly American Jew) is an American (a citizen of the United States) of Jewish descent who maintains a connection to the Jewish community, either through actively practicing Judaism or through cultural and historical affiliation. ... This is a list of notable photographers in the art, documentary and fashion traditions. ...

During the Depression Rothstein was invited by Roy Stryker to join the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration. This small group of photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano, Charlotte Brooks, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in the United States. The Great Depression was an economic downturn which started in 1929 and lasted through most of the 1930s. ... Roy Emerson Stryker (November 5, 1893 - September 27, 1975) was an American economist, government official, and photographer. ... Photo of a sharecropper by Walker Evans for the U.S. Resettlement Administration Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Farm Security Administration was an experiment in collectivizing agriculture — that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms... Esther Bubley (1921 - 1998) was an American photographer who specialized in expressive photos of ordinary people in everyday lives. ... Baptism by a Primitive Baptist church in Morehead, Kentucky, in 1940. ... Walker Evans Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer made famous by his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. ... Russell Lee Russell Lee (1903, Ottawa, Illinois - 1986, Austin, Texas) was an American photographer. ... Gordon Parks at Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963. ... Jack Delano Jack Delano (August 1, 1914 – August 12, 1997) was an American photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was later subsumed by the Office of War Information (OWI) in 1943 when the FSA was eliminated as budget waste. ... African American boy. ... Carl Mydans Carl Mydans (May 18, 1907 – August 16, 2004) was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine. ... Dorothea Lange in 1936; photographer: Paul S. Taylor This photograph, known as Migrant Mother, is probably Dorothea Langes most famous. ... Sacco & Vanzetti mosaic by Ben Shahn, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 - March 14, 1969) was a Lithuanian-born American artist and teacher. ... Rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Qichun, a rural town in Hubei province, China Rural areas (also referred to as the country, countryside) are sparsely settled places away from the influence of large cities. ...

Rothstein had been Stryker's student at Columbia University in the early 1930s. In 1935, as a college senior, he prepared a set of copy photographs for a picture source book on American agriculture that Stryker was assembling. The book was never completed, but before the year was out, Stryker had hired Rothstein at the Resettlement Administration. Columbia University is a private university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... This article needs to be wikified. ...

The photographs made during Rothstein's five-year stint with the photographic section form a catalog of the agency's initiatives. His first assignment was to document the lives of some Virginia farmers who were being evicted to make way for the Shenandoah National Park and about to be relocated by the Resettlement Administration, and subsequent trips took him to the Dust Bowl and to cattle ranches in Montana. This article is about the U.S. Commonwealth. ... Shenandoah National Park encompasses part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Piedmont region of Virginia. ... Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, in 1935. ... Binomial name Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758 Cattle (often called cows in vernacular and contemporary usage, or kye as the Scots plural of cou) are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

The immediate incentive for his February 1937 assignment came from the interest generated by congressional consideration of farm tenant legislation sponsored in the Senate by John H. Bankhead, a moderate Democrat from Alabama with a strong interest in agriculture. Enacted in July, the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act gave the agency its new lease on life as the Farm Security Administration. John Hollis Bankhead (September 13, 1842–March 1, 1920) was a U.S. senator from the state of Alabama. ... The Democratic Party is one of two major political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. ... Official language(s) English Capital Montgomery Largest city Birmingham Area  Ranked 30th  - Total 52,419 sq mi (135,765 km²)  - Width 190 miles (306 km)  - Length 330 miles (531 km)  - % water 3. ...

Gee's Bend

Annie Pettway Bendolph carrying water. Gee's Bend, Alabama. April 1937. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein.

The former home of the Pettways. Gee's Bend, Alabama. April 1937. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein.

On February 18, Stryker wrote Rothstein that the journalist Beverly Smith had told him about a tenant community at Gee's Bend, Alabama, "the most primitive set-up he has ever heard of. Their houses are of mud and stakes which they hew themselves." Smith was preparing an article on tenancy for the July issue of the American Magazine, but Stryker sensed bigger possibilities, telling Rothstein, "We could do a swell story; one that LIFE will grab." Stryker planned to visit Alabama and asked Rothstein to wait for him, but he was never able to make the trip and Rothstein went to Gee's Bend alone. Image File history File linksMetadata Annie_pettway. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Annie_pettway. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Pettway_home. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Pettway_home. ... The former home of the Pettways. ... 1917 issue The American Magazine was founded in June of 1906 stemming from failed publications that had been purchased a few years earlier from publishing mogul Miriam Leslie and operated between 1904 and August of 1905 as Leslies Magazine then until May of 1906 as the American Illustrated Magazine. ... For other uses, see Life (disambiguation), Lives (disambiguation) or Living (disambiguation), Living Things (disambiguation). ...

The residents of Gee's Bend symbolized two different things to the Resettlement Administration. On the one hand, reports about the community prepared by the agency describe the residents as isolated and primitive, people whose speech, habits, and material culture partook of an African origin and an older way of life. On the other hand, the agency's agenda for rehabilitation implied a view of the residents as the victims of slavery and the farm-tenant system on a former plantation. The two perceptions may be seen as related: if these tenants — despite their primitive culture— could benefit from training and financial assistance, their success would demonstrate the efficacy of the programs. A world map showing the continent of Africa. ... This poster depicting the horrific conditions on slave ships was influential in mobilizing public opinion against slavery in Britain and the United States. ... // This article is about crop plantations. ...

Unlike the subjects of many Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs, the people of Gee's Bend are not portrayed as victims. The photographs do not show the back-breaking work of cultivation and harvest, but only offer a glimpse of spring plowing. At home, the residents do not merely inhabit substandard housing but are engaged in a variety of domestic activities. The dwellings at Gee's Bend must have been as uncomfortable as the frame shacks thrown up for farm workers everywhere, but Rothstein's photographs emphasize the log cabins' picturesque qualities. This affirming image of life in Gee's Bend is reinforced by Rothstein's deliberate, balanced compositions which lend dignity to the people being pictured.

There does not seem to have been a Life magazine story about Gee's Bend, but a long article ran in the New York Times Magazine of 27 August 1937. It is illustrated by eleven of Rothstein's pictures, with a text that draws heavily upon a Resettlement Administration report dated in May. The story extols the agency's regional director as intelligent and sympathetic and describes the Gee's Bend project in glowing terms. Reporter John Temple Graves II perceived the project as retaining agrarian — and African — values. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining. ... 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Reference

• Library of Congress