At the height of the Great Depression, the US government created the Resettlement Administration to aid drought-stricken and impoverished farmers. In 1937, the RA was restructured and renamed the Farm Security Administration.
The FSA’s most notable effort was its small team of documentary photographers that toured the country, documenting the living conditions of Americans. A legendary group of documentarians and photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Lewis Hine, and Russell Lee, took part in the project, directed by Roy Stryker.
John Felix Vachon, a 21-year-old Minnesotan attending the Catholic University of America, got a job with the FSA as an assistant messenger in 1936. He had no previous interest in photography, but his constant exposure to the work of the FSA photographers inspired him to give it a try. As a kid, he wandered around Washington, DC, with a Leica camera, and was soon trained, provided equipment, and encouraged by Stryker, Evans, and others in the FSA. He began shooting solo assignments by 1938.
The still-green photographer here captures images of city life in Chicago in his 1941 photographs, which are sometimes distant and unobtrusive, but also sharply observant and quietly funny.
