Book Description

In the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress are more than 1500 photographs of the state of Michigan during the depression and wartime years of the 1930s and 1940s, taken by some of the most talented photographers of that generation. The FSA photographs have become the nation's visual memory of these trying times. Michigan Remembered contains 150 of these images, chosen to represent various geographic areas of Michigan, the economic diversity of the state and its people, and a broad range of subjects ranging from urban and industrial scenes of Detroit and the surrounding areas to images of the Upper Peninsula and rural and community life in the Lower Peninsula. The two introductory essays enhance the story told by the photographs. The first, by William H. Mulligan Jr., recounts the history of Michigan during the momentous events of the depression and wartime years. The second, by Constance B. Schulz, tells the lesser known story of the origins of the FSA in the agricultural program of the New DeaL and exlains the importance of Roy E. Stryker as the agency's director and the process by which more than 200,000 photographs were accumulated in the FSA/OWI files. Brief biographical sketches of the photographers include descriptions of their travels and work in Michigan. Michigan Remembered joins more than a dozen other state studies of the FSA/OWI photographs and provides a unique visual perspective on a key midwestern state during the mid-twentieth century. It will be of interest both to scholars of historical documentary photography and Michigan history, and to those fascinated by historical photographs of years which they, their parents, or their grandparents can still recall.