Your County in the Great Depression

[packman]

In a database called Photogrammar, Yale has just released 170,000 searchable photos of the Great Depression. Previously stored away in the government archives, these are the unseen images taken by great photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein, all of whom were assigned by the Farm Security Administration to document the effects of the declining economy on the population. The database consists of a nation-wide map with clickable counties, each one leading to a gallery of snapshots from the region. Using the information from the Lot Number and Classification Tags systems developed by Paul Vanderbilt in 1942, the collection is searchable by photographer, lot number, and subject heading.

http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/

[procon]

1. Browsing through the photos, the crushing poverty and misery of American citizens

during the Great Depression was an appalling, but preventable catastrophe. Those images look no different than the photos we see today of some wretched third world countries and disaster zones. Remember how quickly we fell into the Great Recession, and how Obama worked tirelessly to stop it?

Now, seeing all the shortsighted, get rich(er) quick schemes and frenetic deregulation efforts of the Republicans, we might all end up just as destitute as our forefathers of that era. If Republicans steer us into a second Great Depression, there's no one, not a one of them, who would know how to stop it.

[smirkymonkey]

2. Thank you for this!

These photos are fascinating. I could look through them all day. What a find!