DOCUMERICA photos: The spoils of industry | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/03/documerica-photos?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/thespoilsoftheindustry
BETWEEN 1972 and 1977 nearly 70 photographers were employed by America’s fledgling Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to photograph the condition of the country’s environment. They were selected by Gifford Hampshire, a former picture editor at National Geographic and a member of the EPA’s public affairs team.
Hampshire was in thrall to the iconic images of the dustbowl during the Great Depression taken four decades earlier by the photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). With the EPA seeking to promote its own mission to examine the country’s decaying environment, he proposed a similarly grand project.
