In the 1930s, the Farm Security Administration was formed to help farmers buy their land. Part of the FSA's job involved creating a 145,000-strong photographic collection of potential beneficiaries. These beautiful, tawdry pictures, with the residue of Depression sadness clinging to them, morphed from information to defensive dogmatism as the world around the photographers changed. Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange feature, but it's subjects, not authors, who count here: a fifth of these pictures are previously unpublished. Essential for anyone interested in America's past.
