Mick Hartley

A wonderful collection of vintage American photos (via Instapundit). Here’s a Depression-era portrait by Theodor Jung:

The “View Full Size” option is the one to go for.

Update: a few of my favourites.

Update 2: I’ve spent a lot of time looking through the archives here, and it is, as I said above, a wonderful collection, but I keep coming back to that Depression-era portrait. Click on it to get a larger view, or, to get a full-page view, go here. If I’ve ever seen a better more powerful portrait I don’t remember it.

Theodor Jung was working for the Farm Security Administration. He’s nowhere near as well-known as colleagues Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange. I wonder how much that’s because the strength and dignity of the woman in this picture didn’t fit so well with the propaganda requirements of the FSA – compared, for instance, to Lange’s famous picture of a migrant mother.

I posted a while back on the propaganda efforts of the FSA in the Thirties, compared to the far more grotesque efforts of their Soviet counterparts.