Jack Delano

While a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, Jack Delano documented the people and places affected by the Great Depression in the eastern United States.  A master of composition and environmental portraiture, Delano focused on people surrounded by their everyday environments, in ever-more-industrialized cities and ever-more-mechanized factories.  Delano sought to find dignity in subjects who seemed dwarfed by the enormous scale of their work, as in this photograph of a female textile worker. The symmetry of the composition is striking; the subject’s blouse and her position behind hundreds of spools of thread create a repetitive pattern of black and white that conveys the monotony of an assembly line or factory.