Liberal Documentary Goes to School: Farm Security Administration Photographs of Students, Teachers and Schools

During the Great Depression, photographers working for the Farm Security Administration produced some of the most iconic images of American hardship and resilience. In this article, Eric Margolis turns his attention to the FSA photographs that documented schools, teachers, and students — images that reveal how education functioned in communities devastated by economic collapse.

Margolis analyzes these photographs not simply as historical documents but as products of a particular political vision. The FSA photographers were dispatched to build public support for New Deal programs, and their images of rural schools simultaneously documented real conditions and constructed a narrative about the redemptive power of education in times of crisis.

The article demonstrates how visual analysis can recover meanings embedded in historical photographs that textual sources alone cannot provide, contributing to both the history of education and the methodology of visual research.