Jack Delano (1914–1997)

Jack Delano was part of a team of photographers employed by the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the New Deal period, under the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The team, which included such renowned photographers as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, was charged with creating visual documentation of social conditions across the country, particularly the impact of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Throughout his career, Jack Delano’s work always focused on the lives of working people. In a 1965 interview, he reflected on his FSA photography, “I think we all had a respect for human beings and we were hoping that in our pictures we were saying something decent about the dignity of mankind, the dignity of human beings, and it didn’t matter who they were…this was a human being of great dignity and this we hoped would be reflected in all the pictures we did. And, of course, people were the basic element in everything we were doing.”

In the waiting room of the Union Station Chicago, Illinois 1943 | 8.5x8 photo | 112.14.07

8x8 photo | 214.14.07