Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). This socially conscious documentarian of Dust Bowl migrants in the 1930s took one of the most famous photographs of the Depression era, Migrant Mother. Dorothea Lange was born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey and learned photography at Columbia University in New York. During the Great Depression Dorothea Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration documenting the plight of the unemployed, homeless and migrant laborers. Dorothea Lange died on October 11, 1965.