Then
Alfred T. Palmer, 1941–43
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and California
Then
Alfred T. Palmer, 1941–43
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and California
In 1942, Roy Stryker penned an urgent memo to his Farm Security Administration photographers. He was upset at the relative age of the people he saw in the FSA pictures, saying “too many in our file paint the US as an old people’s home.” Instead, he wrote: “We must have at once: pictures of men, women, and children who appear as if they really believed in the USA. Get people with a little spirit.”
It was a task easier said than done. Stryker had been leading the FSA’s photo division since 1935. The FSA, a New Deal program, was created to assist the rural poor; it doled out loans, operated camps for displaced farmers, and set up subsistence farming communities, among other relief efforts. Stryker’s fleet of photographers were charged with documenting not just the work of the relief agency, but also the daily lives and struggles of the poor. But by 1942, the United States was at war. Pearl Harbor had been bombed the previous year, and the government was turning its attention to bolstering home-front pride—a theme that didn’t exactly square with images of poverty-stricken farmers.
The same year that Stryker penned his memo urging cheerier photos, the federal government created the Office of War Information, tasked with creating and disseminating wartime propaganda—including triumphant, patriotic images of Americans back at work, particularly in factory jobs where workers were busy assembling what Roosevelt termed an “Arsenal of Democracy.” As wartime efforts ramped up, the work of the FSA was curtailed; its budget was eliminated in 1943. Stryker and his photographic unit were transferred to the Office of War Information.
“The move was in the cards,” Stryker told an interviewer in 1963. “Farm Security was coming to an end ... We were not going to be allowed to do that broad, general coverage of the American scene and there was no justification for it.”
Alfred T. Palmer, a globe-trotting photographer from California who had worked as an assistant to Ansel Adams in his youth, was hired as the lead photographer for the OWI. With a background in commercial photography, he was hired in part as an antidote to Stryker’s unit’s documentation of the poor. He turned his camera on the factory workers who were energetically churning out materials for the war effort. In his photos, no one sat idle: men shaped torpedoes, forged massive guns, and operated formidable machinery. Palmer also photographed the women who went to work in factories, taking the place of men serving in the military. Women in dresses smiled for him as they polished sights for guns, or wore pants and bright lipstick as they built aircraft, like real-life versions of Rosie the Riveter.
Within a year of its transfer to the OWI, the photographic unit of the FSA was fully subsumed by the organization. Stryker departed to take a public relations job with Standard Oil. During his seven years running the FSA photo unit, he had kickstarted the careers of photographers who would go on to define documentary photography in the United States, including Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, and Walker Evans.
The OWI’s life span was even briefer than that of the FSA photo unit; it was dissolved in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. With no war effort to support overseas, taking pictures of happy factory workers was no longer a federal mandate.
Then
Alfred T. Palmer, 1941–43
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and California
Now
Christopher Payne, 2018
Portland, Oregon
Now
Christopher Payne, 2018
Portland, Oregon
I was recently commissioned by Gamblin—makers of beautiful, high-quality oil paints for artists—to photograph their factory in Portland, Oregon. The owners were familiar with the series I had done at the General Pencil Company in Jersey City, and liked the way I was able make a common and seemingly simple object look beautiful and complex. They also appreciated the dignity with which I portrayed the workers, and hoped I’d achieve something similar with their workforce.
Much of my recent work photographing American manufacturing has been influenced by Alfred T. Palmer, a New Deal-era photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and its successor, the Office of War Information, during World War II. He photographed factories, shipyards, dams, and power plants all over the country, and, in particular, made beautiful portraits of men and women assembling airplanes at North American Aviation in Inglewood, California, and Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, California, using dramatic lighting to focus on the worker, obscuring the background in almost total darkness. It’s a theatrical approach that elevates his subjects while lending them warmth and intimacy. Palmer shot 4-by-5-inch color transparencies—which was neither a common nor easy thing to do at the time—and the resulting images are incredibly detailed and vivid, as if they were made just yesterday.
There’s a sense of optimism and energy in Palmer’s subjects: young men and, especially, women who in many cases are taking on manual labor as their first job, reflective of a time when manufacturing was an assured path to the middle class and a necessary part of the war effort. The landscape of American industry is much bleaker today, and in factories I’ve photographed, many of my subjects have typically been older, or part of a struggling demographic—rural white, or recent immigrant—that has few other employment options.
At Gamblin, however, the roughly two dozen employees were young, and seemed proud and committed to being there—like the subjects I imagined in Palmer’s photos. Manufacturing jobs, by their nature, can be repetitive and dull, often tied to an exhausting schedule that workers can’t control. Here, the paint-making process is simple but must be done with care and precision: raw ingredients of dry pigment powder and linseed oil are blended together into a paste, which is milled on steel rollers for consistency of color and texture, and then the paint is filled into tubes.
The Gamblin factory is housed in a generic warehouse that isn’t photogenic in itself. Much of the equipment is old, and originally served a different purpose: the mixers were once used for baking, and the tube fillers used for toothpaste. A large modern paint factory would have automated equipment, but there is very little of that here. Artisanal manufacturing is done at human scale, and operations are confined to the reach of a worker’s hands. The tasks require more skill than meets the eye, and within the choreography of production there were real moments of beauty and elegance.
I’ve photographed the gleaming factories where new Teslas and Airbus airplanes are made: enormous, brightly lit spaces where an army of workers in sharp uniforms usher an impressive new technology into the world. But in a place like the Gamblin factory, intimacy is more important that scale, and I wanted my photographs to reflect the attention to detail that goes into this work—a level of craftsmanship that is nowadays all too rare.
Christopher Payne is a New York City-based photographer specializing in architecture and industry. He is the author of several books and his work is regularly featured in the New York Times Magazine and other publications around the world.
Explore Federal Project no. 2
This Land Is Your Land
During the Depression, the federal government urged Americans to visit the country’s natural wonders.
Shelter in Place
The most iconic image from the Great Depression centers on rural poverty—but then, as now, the misery of homelessness was compounded in America’s cities.
Song of the Mississippi
Heartbreak defines the human experience. And nothing can break your heart like your own country.
Hole in One
Harnessing the power of the humble hole punch, to either create narratives or deflate them.
Back to the Music, Back to the Game
A visit to the juke joints in the Florida Everglades where migrant laborers could go to relax.
The Exquisite Catalog of a Crow Fair
Wendy Red Star brings illustrations from the Denver Art Museum’s card catalog to the Crow Nation’s annual gathering.
Public Service Announcements
Updating the iconic posters of the Works Progress Administration.
Proposals for a Monument
Public art has the power to show us what we want to see—or reveal what we deserve.
Portraits of Hard Living in America
The faces and places of a forgotten swath of American life.
The Afterlives of Slaves
Snapshots of a life after slavery, and an imagining of a world without bondage.
If You Build It, They Will Leave
During the New Deal, Southwest DC was razed to create a “model city” for federal workers. Now the area is being redeveloped again, this time into a gentrified urban playground.
The Health and Safety of the Mother
During the Depression, the government encouraged men to get back to work—and women to stay home.
Child’s Play
Handmade dolls embodied marginalized workers’ desire for autonomy—and, now, the plight of children at the United States’ southern border.
A Room of One’s Own
A photograph of a home speaks volumes about the inhabitant, even when they’re not included in the shot.
A Queen Is Born
A local beauty pageant can be about more than just looks. It can also reveal how a community wants to be seen.
Stoop Life and Survival
Documenting a life of a neighborhood means covering street life in all of its joy and pain.
Window Shopping
Conspicuous consumption plummeted during the Great Depression, but the fantasy of big spending remains a part of the American dream.
The Visible Man
Telling, and preserving, the stories that reveal what it’s really like to be black in America—from Ralph Ellison’s classic novel to now.
The People of the Land
Dust Bowl migrants had to pull up roots. Native Hawaiians are strengthening theirs.
After the Curtain Calls
Fulfilling the American dream of standing under bright lights while your friends and neighbors applaud.
The American Guide to the New Vermont
Shane Lavalette follows the refugees who have made their home in the whitest state in the nation.
The Measure of a Man
As Depression-era art centered on the heroic male figures rebuilding America, Paul Cadmus infused his public work with overt expressions of gay desire.
Letting Sleeping Children Lie
Leanne Shapton reconsiders motherhood after seeing a photograph of children asleep during a square dance.
When Art Is an Act of Protest
A summer of activism in Chicago reminds us that in order for history to be taught, it must first be recorded.
The Pioneer Women
For young women who grow up on the family farm, there comes a time to make a choice—should I stay or should I go?
The Shapes of Things to Come
Before many Americans had ever seen an abstract painting, the WPA commissioned artists to create large, avant-garde murals—for installation in a public housing project.
Signs of Boom and Bust
Mark Steinmetz drives the streets of the city’s fast-growing urban sprawl.
The Many Lives of McCarren Park Pool
Beloved, abandoned, then beloved once more, a Brooklyn pool transforms alongside its neighborhood.
On the Road in Search of Soul
The black Southerners who joined the Great Migration wanted to leave oppression behind—not their beloved family recipes. Their traditions would redefine American cooking.
She Works Hard for the Money
During the Depression, women were advised to “sing for their supper” as a way to survive hard times.
Wall to Wall
Public murals are contested spaces, where retellings of history and new visions of the future fight for prominence.
Life Beyond Bars
The Works Progress Administration funded the creation of public works like dams, bridges—and more than 30 prisons and jails.
Making Headlines
The relentless churn of daily news can feel like a burden—especially for those who don’t see themselves represented in it.
The Cycle of a Woman’s Life
A 20th-century mural for a women’s prison meets 21st-century inequality.
