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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
To most people, federally-sponsored photography during the New Deal means the splendid file of images created by the Resettlement Administration–later the Farm Security Administration of the Department of Agriculture. Understandable as it is, this equation simplifies truth. By the time of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration in March 1933, the use of photography was commonplace in the federal bureaucracy, reflecting practices that had been developing for more than half a century. Since the Civil War, federal officials had profited from the precision of photography and from its deceptive appearance of objectivity to preserve information and sometimes to influence opinion. A few government projects had resulted in compelling educational documentations that were also recognized as compelling art. Most notably, photographers like John Hillers, William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'sullivan, and Carleton Watkins, tested by the opportunity to expand the possibilities of their medium while addressing a great national theme, had compiled in their records of the exploration of the West documentations that helped to change public policy by providing images with the power to crystallize the country's sense of its identity and potential growth.
1. For a survey of 19th-century American photography, both federally and privately sponsored, see Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene (New York: Macmillan, 1938; rpt. New York: Dover, 1964).Google Scholar A sampling of federally sponsored photography over the years, including one image recorded by Sekaer for the Rural Electrification Administration, appears in The American Image: Photographs from the National Archives, 1860–1960 (New York: Pantheon, 1979).Google Scholar Sekaer's work for the United States Housing Authority provides a good example of the vulnerability of photographs made for the government. Of the thousands of pictures he took for the USHA, only a few hundred prints and a handful of negatives have been located. As recently as the summer of 1979, most of the prints possessed by the government were slated for destruction. At the time of this writing, they are being preserved in primitive conditions at the National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland, in Record Group 196, 68-A-5706, Boxes 1–3. The other substantial collection of his housing photographs is in the possession of his widow, Elizabeth Sekaer Rothschild, and their daughter, Dr. Christina Sekaer. The family is donating the photographs to the Library of Congress.
2. McCamy, James L., Government Publicity: Its Practice in Federal Administration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), pp. 51, 79.Google Scholar
3. Ibid., pp. 223–32.
4. Gutheim, Frederick, letter to Sundell, Michael G., 01 21, 1980.Google Scholar
5. Ibid.; McCamy, , p. 193.Google Scholar
6. On the political situation that preceded the passage of the Wagner Act, see McDonnell, Timothy L. S.J., The Wagner Housing Act: A Case Study of the Legislative Process (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1957).Google Scholar For general information about the housing movement and public housing in the United States, see Friedman, Laurence M., Government and Slum Housing (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968).Google Scholar On the related issue of city planning during the period, see Scott, Mel, “A New Perspective: The Urban Community in National Life,” American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 270–367.Google Scholar
7. Information about the practice of publicity at the USHA, including the use of photography, is scattered through records assembled after World War II by Hyman Ezra Cohen, Historian of the Federal Public Housing Administration, which succeeded the USHA. They are preserved at the National Archives in Record Group 196, 62-A-639. The boxes most interesting from this point of view are 18–20 and 24. For a list of publicity materials sponsored or encouraged by the USHA, including films, radio programs, and a marionette play, see Wood, Edith Elmer and Ogg, Elizabeth, The Homes The Public Builds (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1940), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar For a brief account of publicity practices at RA, see Baldwin, Sidney, Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 117–19.Google Scholar Baldwin incorrectly identifies Margaret Bourke-White as a photographer for RA.
8. McCamy, , p. 82Google Scholar; Gutheim; Elizabeth Sekaer Rothschild, interview with Sundell, Michael G., 07 6, 1979.Google Scholar Mrs. Rothschild worked in the USHA photography library. An exhibition catalogue edited by Garver, Thomas H. called Just Before the War (Balboa, California: Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1968)Google Scholar suggests a larger interest in urban documentation on the part of RA. As Robert J. Doherty points out, “Sometimes the FSA crews did pass through towns and cities, and recorded these in the course of their major pursuit of taking pictures of the rural scene. And when Arthur Rothstein returned to New York to visit his family, he took pictures of the city which found their way into the FSA files. This was the extent of documenting the urban scene.” “The Elusive Roy Stryker,” Roy Stryker: The Human Propagandist, ed. Anderson, John C. (Louisville, Ky.: Photographic Archives, University of Louisville, 1977), n.p.Google Scholar On the Resettlement Administration garden towns and on planned communities generally during the period, see Conkin, Paul K., Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959)Google Scholar, and Stein, Clarence S., Toward New Towns for America, with an Introduction by Mumford, Lewis, rev. ed. (New York: Reinhold, 1957).Google Scholar
9. These disagreements are apparent in many documents in Record Group 196, 61-A-639.
10. Thomson, John and Smith, Adolphe, Street Life in London (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Scarle, and Rivington, 1877–1888)Google Scholar; Riis, Jacob A., How the Other Half Lives (New York: Scribner's, 1890).Google Scholar
11. The act was designed to help the poorest employed Americans, not the unemployed.
12. Wood, Edith Elmer, Introduction to Housing: Facts and Figures (Washington: U. S. Housing Authority, 1940), pp. 23–24.Google Scholar
13. National Association of Housing Officials, A Housing Program for the United States (Chicago: National Association of Housing Officials, 1934).Google Scholar
14. See, for example, Mumford, Lewis, “The Social Imperatives of Housing,” America Can't Have Housing, ed. Aronovici, Carol (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1934), pp. 15–19Google Scholar; Bauer, Catherine, Modern Housing (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934).Google Scholar For an analysis from a different perspective, presenting the housing crisis as an opportunity to modernize the building industry, see The Editors of Fortune, Housing America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932).Google Scholar The principal author of this book was Archibald MacLeish. A series of articles in The New Republic addressed the questions, “What is the concrete situation in New York, and what is the best approach to it?”: Mayer, Albert, “New Homes for a New Deal I: Slum Clearance-But How?,” The New Republic 78 (02 14, 1934): 7–9Google Scholar; Wright, Henry, “New Homes for a New Deal II: Abolishing Slums Forever,” The New Republic 78 (02 21, 1934): 41–44Google Scholar; Mumford, Lewis, “New Homes for a New Deal III: The Shortage of Dwellings and Direction,” The New Republic 78 (02 28, 1934): 69–72Google Scholar; Mayer, Albert, Wright, Henry, and Mumford, Lewis, “New Homes for a New Deal IV: A Concrete Program,” The New Republic 78 (03 7, 1934): 91–94.Google Scholar
15. Wood, Edith Elmer, Slums and Blighted Areas in the United States (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1935).Google Scholar
16. Ibid., p. 4.
17. Aronovici.
18. Bauer, , p. 215Google Scholar; Mumford, , “The Social Imperatives of Housing,”Google Scholar in Aronovici, , pp. 16–17.Google Scholar
19. For a concise, though later, presentation of this standard argument, see The United States Housing Authority, What the Housing Act Can Do For Your City (Washington: U. S. Housing Authority, 1938), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar
20. See Record Group 196, 61-A-639, passim.
21. Sekaer, Peter, “Nothing to Photograph Here,” U. S. Camera (08 1941): 66–67.Google Scholar
22. In practice he worked mainly in the Eastern half of the country. Most pictures of sites in the West seem to have been taken by independent photographers for local authorities.
23. Gutheim.
24. See, for example, memorandum from Straus, Nathan to Keyserling, Leon H., 10 9, 1939Google Scholar, Record Group 196, 61-A-639, Box 19.
25. Biographical information about Sekaer derives from the recollections of Elizabeth Sekaer Rothschild and Christina Sekaer and from documents in their possession, especially an annotated curriculum vitae prepared in 1942.
26. Sekaer also exhibited with these photographers in the second annual U. S. Camera Salon at Rockefeller Center in 1936. Elizabeth McCausland mentioned his work favorably, along with that of Lange and Rothstein, in her review of the exhibition in The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, 10 4, 1936Google Scholar, p. 6E. The review is illustrated by two pictures-one each by Sekaer and Berenice Abbott.
27. Carbon copy of letter from Sekaer, Peter to MrsRoosevelt, Franklin D., 08 24, 1936Google Scholar, in the possession of Elizabeth Sekaer Rothschild. Another carbon copy is preserved in the Roy Stryker Papers, Archives of American Art. The foreword to the published catalogue appears over the name of R. G. Tugwell. Sekaer claimed to have written it (Curriculum vitae, p. 9).Google Scholar
28. Letter of Gutheim, Frederick to Sundell, Michael G., 02 8, 1980Google Scholar; Sekaer, , Curriculum vitae, p. 11.Google Scholar
29. Ibid., pp. 11–12.
30. Steiner, Ralph, “Live People vs. Drab Places Can Be Dramatic,” PM's Weekly (01 17, 1940): 49.Google Scholar
31. Sekaer, , Curriculum vitae, p. 11.Google Scholar
32. Steiner, , p. 48.Google Scholar
33. On the incident of the pennies, see the account by Arthur Rothstein, quoting Sekaer, , in “Direction in the Picture Story,”Google Scholar in Morgan, Williard, ed., The Complete Photographer 4 (1942): 1360.Google Scholar The other information about Sekaer's methods of working was provided by Elizabeth Sekaer Rothschild.
34. For a successful presentation of this Utopian vision, see Dyke, Willard Van and Steiner, Ralph's film of 1939Google Scholar, The City. Sekaer worked briefly on this film and more extensively on Power and the Land, directed by Joris Ivens for the U. S. Film Service in 1940 (Sekaer, , Curriculum vitae, p. 1).Google Scholar