Abstract

In this article I argue that the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs of the Greenbelt Town program in the late 1930s function beyond the goals for which the FSA photographs are typically known.1 The FSA photographs documented scenes of urban and rural poverty during the Great Depression to make the case for supporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. In the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. government planned and built three Greenbelt towns with a utopian vision of modern living for displaced farmers and the urban poor. I argue that within the larger collection of FSA photographs, which typically portray images of American struggle and resilience, exists a group of photographs ..