ABSTRACT
Lange’s attempt to see “things as they are” was the animating idea behind an important new movement in photography. Provoked by the Depression and nurtured by the New Deal, dozens if not hundreds of photographers felt compelled to record history in progress. In her new job, Lange crisscrossed the US before a system of national highways existed. She continued to investigate conditions in California, becoming preoccupied with her state’s transition from one of wild splendor to a magnet for development. Like Taylor, Tugwell’s history shows how academics and government officials came to focus on the economy as a set of human-made relations that could be altered for the better. As an undergraduate, Tugwell studied with economics professor Simon Patten, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, beginning in 1911. Stryker communicated his excitement for “an encyclopedia of American life,” an expansive project, with Lange and her husband.
