Our hayfield photos from the U.S. Farm Security Administration

---

For information on Depression-era woodcut artist Clare Leighton, creator of the illustration in our logo, click here or see below.  

As a magazine art director in Washington, D.C., for over thirty years, I have a soft spot for the historic images in the files of the Library of Congress. The rural photographs on the Hayfields General Store walls are by noted American photographers Marion Post Wolcott, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein and others of the local area and across the nation, commissioned by the United States Farm Security Administration, and form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. A fellow staffer and friend of mine at the Washington Post, writer Paul Hendrickson captured the magic and mystery of the pioneering government-sponsored corp of photographers in his extraordinary book Looking for the Light—The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992):

• "Before the project was over, 270,000 images had been produced. Not every rectangle survives. And yet the ones we have! If we think now, and rightly, of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as achieving some lasting Depression art—all those post office murals, federal theater projects, and writers' guides to the states—it is nonetheless the photographs of the FSA that provide us with the enduring image of what this country looked, felt, and tasted like during the bitter years. You can say ‘FSA’ today and people will nod. What they are assenting to is our collective memory of the Depression. They may have long forgotten, or never known, what the letters stand for. But they can still see the bleached wood on the false front of the U.S. Post Office at Sprott, Alabama. They can see the bony farmer with the bib apron getting his ears lowered on Saturday morning at W. M. Scott’s General Store and Feed Emporium in Farrington, North Carolina. That’s one of Marion’s.”

This government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, formerly an economics instructor at Columbia University, and also included photographers Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans. The project initially documented cash loans made to individual farmers by the Resettlement Administration and the construction of planned suburban communities. The second stage focused on the lives of sharecroppers in the South and migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. As the scope of the project expanded, the photographers turned to recording both rural and urban conditions throughout the United States as well as mobilization efforts for World War II. 

The collection encompasses the images made by photographers working in Stryker’s unit as it existed in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and non-governmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations. In total, the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives and transparencies, 1,610 color transparencies, and around 107,000 black-and-white photographic prints, most of which were made from the negatives and transparencies. The collection was transferred to the Library of Congress in 1944. 

Although photographers in Roy Stryker’s unit were sent out on assignments throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, the unit’s main office was at Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. The office distributed photographic equipment and film, drew up budgets, allocated travel funds, hired staff, developed, printed, and numbered most negatives, reviewed developed film, edited photographers’ captions written in the field, and maintained files of negatives, prints, and captions. The main office also distributed images to newspapers, magazines, and book publishers, and supplied photographs to exhibitions. 

Staff photographers were given specific subjects and/or geographic areas to cover. These field assignments often lasted several months. Before beginning their assignments, photographers read relevant reports, local newspapers, and books in order to become familiar with their subject. A basic shooting script or outline was often prepared. Photographers were encouraged to record anything that might shed additional light on the topic that they were photographing, and they received training in making personal contacts and interviewing people. 

Most of the time the photographers mailed their exposed negatives to the photographic unit’s lab in Washington for developing, numbering and printing. In the initial years of the project Stryker was almost exclusively responsible for reviewing contact prints made from the negatives and selecting images that he considered suitable for printing. Over time, however, photographers played a greater role in picture selection. 

After Stryker reviewed and selected images, the negatives and contact prints (or “first prints”) were returned to the photographers for captioning. The resulting captions were edited at the photographic unit’s headquarters. The selected images were then printed and mounted, the captions were applied to the photo mounts, and the photographs were filed in the photographic unit’s file.

While working for decades as a magazine art director long before I was a baker, I was in love with the work of illustrator Clare Leighton, an English-American artist and writer, best known for her wood engravings. Born in London in 1898, she was the daughter of Robert Leighton and Marie Connor Leighton, both authors. Her early efforts at painting were encouraged by her parents and her uncle Jack Leighton, an artist and illustrator. In 1915, she began formal studies at the Brighton College of Art and later trained at the Slade School of Fine Art (1921-23), and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied wood engraving. 

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Clare visited the United States on several lecture tours. In 1939 she emigrated to the US and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Over the course of her prolific career, she wrote and illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. During the 1920s and 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural working men and women. In the 1950s she created designs for Steuben Glass, Wedgwood plates, and several stained-glass windows for churches in New England. Leighton produced more than 900 different wood engravings during her lifetime.

Years ago I became pen pals with Clare’s nephew David Leighton in England. We bonded over his aunt’s woodcuts, her admiration for rural farmers, and, remarkably, about David’s long friendship with my friend Patsy Dane Rogers, with whom I worked at The Washington Post for years. After a query to David about using one of Clare’s illustrations for a logo, he graciously allowed me to use Clare’s woodcut of a farmer in the hayfields:

• “Your project sounds just the sort of thing that Clare would have favoured. Her respect for the labouring man and the hard and earthy life of the farmer were as clear in her life as in her work. Furthermore, it is important that we of urbanised nations be kept aware of our fundamental dependence on the sun and the soil, as well as gaining access to wholesome natural food. Your letter put me in mind of Clare's illustration on page 61 of Freedom’s Farm by Josephine Young Case (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946). This shows a horse-drawn plow and plowman with a young corn plant in the foreground (Boston Public Library catalog number 594). However, you may well find it rather too large to make a good logo. As you know, there are many smaller illustrations in other books; you will certainly be able to choose the best. I look forward to hearing and seeing your ideas, and wish you success with your new enterprise. With good wishes, David”

With the arrival of Hayfields General Store saluting our local farming families, Clare Leighton’s 1935 “Sharpening the Scythe” woodcut is the finishing touch to my project, thanks to the courtesy of David Leighton and the kind permission of Clare Leighton’s estate (illustration © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London). My typeface selection, a 1930s font with rural characteristics and a nod to the Shenandoah National Park just nine miles west, likewise dates back to the era of Clare’s illustration. More of Clare Leighton’s framed woodcuts and her Wedgwood plates from my private collection will be displayed on our walls, and a new book, Clare Leighton’s Rural Life: An Anthology (The University of Chicago Press, 2025) by David Leighton will be available for purchase on our shelves. Come get to know Clare—you’ll love her work as much as I do.  —Brian Noyes, Hayfields General Store proprietor