New Deal Photography Captured Life in Virginia

Five New Deal agencies had photographic units, but the work of one specifically stands out: the expansive Farm Security Administration (FSA), which had more functions than any other agency due to its colossal mission of battling the Great Depression’s most widespread problem, rural poverty. Publicity was a key complement to FSA initiatives. But FSA photographers were charged with more than simply producing file and publicity photos. Their mission was to capture the life of a nation in all its forms.

The FSA hired the best photographers it could find—professionals and skilled amateurs, men and women—whose talents, experience, and sheer desire to capture the most iconic images ensured a uniformly high standard of work. If it could be said that their approach adhered to one adage, it was, Don’t spare the film! They didn’t. 

Today, the Library of Congress archives include hundreds of thousands of pictures they took. Each photographer was a keen looker and an opportunist of the moment. Their pictures were both straightforward and peculiarly American compositions. Here were the trappings of life lived simply, of hard work, of meager living conditions by today’s standards, and yet, of quiet pride and dogged determination, too. They recorded people with a sensitive humanitarian visual rhetoric, and in so doing, portrayed the soul and spirit of the nation.

The FSA ensured its photographs were widely seen via the agency’s carefully cultivated and extensive network of contacts in journalism and publishing. The marquee magazine of the time, Life, and others such as Look, Time, and Fortune, were collectively changing the reading habits of the nation. They were full of slick photography, much of it supplied by the FSA and other New Deal agencies eager to publicize their work.

In the accompanying photos, most taken in Virginia, the camera wasn’t an aesthetic device employed to capture images for the sake of art, but rather a means to record reality as it was, sometimes unlovely, oftentimes commonplace, but with respect for the dignity of people’s lives and pursuits. As we look back from 80-plus years in the future, we see sincere, matter-of-fact glimpses, poignant glances, of ordinary people living in simpler but more challenging times who meet the camera’s gaze unselfconsciously.

Virginia then, as Virginia today, was filled with ordinary, everyday people. So, when New Deal photographers set out on the greatest social documentation project in history, their subjects were not hard to find. And, many thousands of photographs later, the simple glory of their stories—from the Great Depression through the war years—were there, in black and white, without fanfare but deserving of it for posterity’s sake.

Italian immigrant Sarra Valentino shot these Roanoke children in a marching for victory pose to salute their scrap metal collecting for the war effort in 1942. Her career included photo credits in Fortune, Life, Time, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Was the walkie-talkie, a compact, innovative two-way radio for its time? Roger that. This shot, taken by photojournalist Howard Liberman at Fort Meyer in 1942, helped promote the sale of $50 war bonds.
On a day off, a Newport News shipyard worker and his best friend go bird hunting for the dinner table. WWII was a time of rationing on the home front, and people supplemented their groceries however they could. Photo by Pat Terry, May 1942.

Learn more about VMFA’s A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845.


This article originally appeared in the February 2025 issue.

George Tisdale
George Tisdale is a Richmond-based writer and painter. In his spare time, he trods mountain trails, wades trout streams, pets other people’s dogs, and wrangles grandchildren.
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