I have always been interested in the world that my parents lived through – the Depression of the 1930s, World War II, and the Cold War. I can’t imagine how terrifying those times of conflict and uncertainty might have been. I have also been inspired by how photography, even imperfectly, can sometimes be a way to transport us back to that time and catch a glimpse of how their lives might have looked and be imagined.
The Library of Congress in Washington, DC is one of the largest libraries in the world and is also the repository of the famous survey of American life called the Farm Security Administration (FSA). It was one of the largest government-sponsored documentary photographic survey projects of all time. The photographs from this collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. Photographers were sent all over the country during the Great Depression mostly documenting the federal government’s efforts to overcome the economic disaster of those hard times. The work continued into WWII under the Office of War Information (OWI). Some of the work also documented American life in a positive way and some of these images were later used as propaganda to counter the rise of fascism before and during WWII and Stalin’s Soviet power during the Cold War afterwards.
Some of my favorite photographers were hired by the FSA including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, and Jack Delano. In September 1941, Delano was sent on assignment to record the Tunbridge World’s Fair in the small, rural town of Tunbridge, VT. Because we had just visited this “World’s” Fair with our nephew Bart and his wife Hannah, I decided to look at the Library of Congress’ website to see if there were any photographs by the FSA of Tunbridge. What I discovered was a goldmine of over 300 images by the multi-talented, Ukrainian immigrant named Jack Delano of the Tunbridge Fair. Delano tended to focus on the cultural and social patterns of a place which provided a rich source of visual information for our own interests.
September 1941 was just a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entering WWII. Europe had been consumed with the war for two years already but when these photos were made, the US was still in the twilight of peace before the disaster of war. I was struck by how few young men appear in these photographs. It is possible that in an agricultural community, many of the young men were off working on the farms and couldn’t get time off to go to the Fair. Another explaination could be that many had already enlisted in the military in the lead up to the war. Of course, we now have the luxury of knowing what happened after September 1941, but I wondered as I looked into the faces of the people in the FSA photographs what were they thinking and feeling as many, even then, feared we would get sucked into the war.
Eighty-two years later, Tunbridge and its Fair are still here and, in many ways unchanged but totally different. Agricultural exhibits still attracted some of the largest crowds as people flocked to see the cows and pigs, chickens and rabbits, and lambs and goats. Another big draw were the pig races which I thought were weird but succeeded in whipping up the audience. The ox-pull also seemed strange but has been in existence since they were first used to clear the rocky soil of Vermont over 200 years ago. The way people dressed also seemed different today than in 1941. Even going to a small, rural fair people tended to dress up and everyone wore hats. Today we wear t-shirts and jeans and are much more casual in our appearance. Our enormous genetically modified corn had been smothered in ground Doritos, mayonnaise and cheese but still tasted delicious. I can only imagine what food was like in 1941 at the Fair. The Vermont Republican Party had a booth containing the usual Trumpy MAGA angry divisiveness. This provided a stark contrast to 1941 when the country faced a true existential threat, and we were led by one of our greatest presidents.
Perhaps the largest change was in the land itself. As I studied the comparative photographs, I was amazed at how open the hills around Tunbridge were in 1941 and how the forests have filled in most of the open spaces today. Changes in land use over the centuries have drastically altered the ecology and it is not coincidental that much of the early thinking about preserving the environment originated in New England. William Cronon’s 1983 book Changes in the Land and, of course, George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 classic book Man and Nature began my understanding of the changes over time of what I was seeing in this part of the world today. I can only imagine what Tunbridge will look like eighty-two years from now.
Stay tuned…
Note: all the black and white photos above are from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. All of those images were made by Jack Delano in September, 1941 in Tunbridge, VT.
Library Road Trip 