Pennsylvania Stories
Times of Sorrow & Hope
During the Great Depression and World War II, a government-sponsored photographic project created an unparalleled pictorial record of American life. As employees of the Resettlement Administration and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI), a group of American photographers—some famous, others to become famous, and some who remain largely unknown—fanned out across the country to document the effects of the Depression and the war on the American people.
Coal miner, 1940.Photo by Jack Delano
When the project began in 1935, its goal was to compile a visual record of the repercussions of the Great Depression on America's rural population, spurring the public to support government relief and resettlement efforts. But as the Depression lengthened, the photographers reached into the cities, into mining and mill towns, into white working-class, African American, and Latino neighborhoods, recording the misery, the resilience, and the spirit of the American people.
Pennsylvania—and the rest of the United States—was at a crossroads between 1929 and 1945. These years marked a transition from the Industrial Revolution of the previous century to the technological and social revolutions of the postwar years.
Although important political and economic changes loomed, they would be dwarfed by the cultural and social transformation of the nation by the automobile, the interstate highway system, the extension of electric power to all parts of the country, the popularization of air travel, and the television.
The moving and lucid images created by the Farm Security Administration photographers brilliantly caught Pennsylvania at this crossroads. They allow us to look back to a time long gone but still inextricably linked to our lives, encouraging us to ponder our profound connection to these landscapes, these places, and these people.
We hope that by viewing these images, readers will gain a better understanding of how an earlier generation of Pennsylvanians lived, worked, played, worshipped, struggled, and endured.
The photographs, text, and captions on these pages are from Times of Sorrow & Hope: Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Depression and World War II: A Photographic Record, by Allen Cohen and Ronald L. Filippelli, published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in June 2003. Allen Cohen is a retired librarian from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a bibliographer, and a film historian. Ronald L. Filippelli, Ph.D., retired in December 2004 as associate dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and professor emeritus of labor studies and industrial relations. For more information on the book and on the photographs of the FSA-OWI collection, see the companion website.
