fragments

Outstanding Photos: “Going Back” (1942) by John Vachon March 18, 2009

John Vachon (1914–1975) is an outstanding American photographer. In 1936 he was hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) as an “assistant messenger”. The FSA itself was created a year before as a part of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program (to be more exact, a sequence of programs) aimed to overcome the Great Depression. John Vachon’s duty was to register the pictures that were being taken through the U.S. government photography project set up to record rural and urban conditions throughout the United States. He discovered an interest in photography and soon was hired by the FSA already as a “photographer”. From 1942 to 1943 John Vachon was a photographer for the Office of War Information created to consolidate government information services during the Second World War.

When you do the filing, why don’t you look at the pictures. (A memoir by John Vachon’s son quotes Roy E. Stryker, the head of U.S. government photography project)

In 1942 John Vachon made the photograph of the “Road out of Romney, West Virginia” with 35mm color transparency film. I think, this photograph is absolutely wonderful. It is a part of pictorial record of American life in the 1930s and 1940s, and, at the same time, it deals with the ageless themes of departure and return.

1. John Vachon – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. John Vachon _ Shorpy Photo Archive

3. Photographs from the FSA and OWI

4. Arthurdale, West Virginia » Photo Gallery

5. Road out of Romney, West Va. (LOC) | photo page – everystockphoto

6. John Vachon: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article

7. John Vachon, Miles Orvell. John Vachon’s America, University of California Press, 2003