ABSTRACT
While Lewis Hine was working on his photographs of the Empire State Building, America plunged into a severe economic downturn known as the Great Depression. The Depression began in October 1929, when New York Stock Exchange experienced an enormous drop. As the Great Depression grew worse, Americans demanded that Congress and Republican president Herbert Hoover provide new legislation that would put people back to work. But Hoover did very little, believing that economic downturn would end by itself, as other depressions had in the past. Nevertheless, Hine was successful in landing a short assignment with the Rural Electrification Administration. In 1935, he traveled through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, shooting photographs along the way. Two of the most successful photographers during the Great Depression were Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. During the 1930s, she was hired by New Deal agencies to photograph families who had lost their farms. She provided these pictures to newspapers to publicize hardships of average Americans.
