More American Photographs

More American Photographs featured more than 100 works presenting some of the best-known examples from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) alongside recently commissioned work from 12 contemporary artists. Inspired by the FSA’s 1930’s and 1940’s program to document the Great Depression’s effects on America’s landscape and people, More American Photographs offered a portrait of America today in the wake of the Great Recession. Incorporating FSA works owned by the Library of Congress, this exhibition vividly and poignantly discloses the diverse effects of the recent economic calamity: environmental disasters, factory-ghost towns, the collapse of the housing boom and a lack of economic mobility. The exhibition’s title refers to Walker Evans’s American Photographs, one of the most powerful photography books ever produced, originally conceived as a catalogue to accompany Evans’s solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1938. 

The exhibition’s 12 contemporary artists included Walead Beshty (b. 1976, London), Larry Clark (b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma), Roe Ethridge (b. 1969, Miami), Katy Grannan (b. 1969, Arlington, Virginia), William E. Jones (b. 1962, Canton, Ohio), Sharon Lockhart (b. 1964, Norwood, Massachusetts), Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio), Martha Rosler (b. 1943, Brooklyn), Collier Schorr (b. 1963, New York), Stephen Shore (b. 1947, New York), Alec Soth (1969, Minneapolis, Minnesota) and Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey). Many of these artists, some of whom do not typically work in a documentary style, have emulated the same straightforward and unglamorous style of photorealism the FSA photographers pioneered in the 1930s. Such historical examples included Esther Bubley (1921-1988), Sheldon Dick (1906-1950), Walker Evans (1903-1975), Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Russell Lee (1903-1986), Gordon Parks (1912-2006), Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990), Louise Rosskam (1910-2003) and Ben Shahn (1898-1969).