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PHOTOGRAPHED
AMERICA
Arthur Rothstein. Grace Rothstein. The FSA. Look Magazine. A Speed Graphic, a Leica, and 270,000 images that changed how America saw itself.
Photos shared by Rob Stoner — Arthur and Grace's son
In 1935, a 19-year-old Columbia University student named Arthur Rothstein walked into Roy Stryker's office at the Farm Security Administration in Washington, D.C. Stryker was looking for someone to document the human cost of the Great Depression. He hired Arthur on the spot. It was the first day of a career that would produce some of the most important photographs in American history.
Arthur Rothstein was not just a photographer. He was a witness. Over the next five decades — through the Dust Bowl, the New Deal, World War II, the golden age of Look Magazine, and the political upheavals of the 1960s and 70s — he pointed his camera at America and let it speak. The result was 270,000 images, now held in the Library of Congress, that constitute one of the most comprehensive visual documents of 20th-century American life ever assembled.
His son, Rob Stoner — a musician, a storyteller, and a man who clearly inherited his father's eye for the essential moment — has been sharing this archive with the world one photograph at a time on Facebook. Rob and Gerald have been in conversation. This feature is for Rob, and for the parents he is honouring.
- Born
- July 17, 1915, New York City
- Died
- November 11, 1985
- Career
- 50 years
- FSA tenure
- 1935–1940
- Look Magazine
- Director of Photography, 1940–1971
- Archive
- 270,000 images, Library of Congress
- Grace Rothstein
- Professional photographer, his partner in life and work
- Son
- Rob Stoner — musician, archive custodian
"Rob and I have been going back and forth on Messenger. He knows who I am. When I saw what he was sharing — his father's photographs, his mother's photographs, the whole archive — I knew this story had to be told properly. This one is for Rob."
— Gerald Shaffer
The FSA Years: Documenting America in Crisis
Roy Stryker's FSA photography project was one of the most ambitious documentary efforts in American history. Between 1935 and 1944, Stryker assembled a team of photographers — Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott — and sent them across America to document the human cost of the Depression and the New Deal's response to it.
Arthur was the first. He was 19 years old. He had been Stryker's student at Columbia, and Stryker trusted his eye. What Arthur brought back from his first assignments — the Dust Bowl, the migrant camps, the tenant farmers of the South — established the visual language of the entire project.
The skull on cracked earth. The farmer and his sons walking into a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. The migrant family of eight living in a dwelling in Winter Haven, Florida. These are not just photographs. They are the visual record of a civilisation under extreme stress — and Arthur made them at 19, 20, 21 years old, with a 4×5 Speed Graphic and a bag of sheet film.
Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm — Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936 · Arthur Rothstein / FSA · Public Domain
Skull on cracked earth — Badlands, South Dakota, 1936
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
Migrant family of 8 in a single dwelling — Winter Haven, Florida, 1937
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
Family about to be resettled in new housing — Martin County, Indiana, 1938
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
The Skull That Started a Controversy
The Badlands skull photograph — a steer skull on cracked, drought-parched earth — became one of the most reproduced images of the FSA project. It also became the centre of a political controversy when it emerged that Arthur had moved the skull to a more dramatically cracked section of ground to improve the composition. Critics accused the FSA of staging propaganda. Stryker defended his photographer. The debate about documentary photography and artistic intervention has never fully resolved — but the image remains one of the defining photographs of the Dust Bowl era.
Rancher's wife on party line phone — Circle 'U' Ranch, Montana, 1939
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
The Drake family playing at Saturday night dance — FSA camp, Weslaco, Texas, 1942
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
The Equipment: What He Carried
"Dad on assignment, 1937. Old school photo gear was heavy. One had to be in shape to schlep it around and hold it steady for the shot."
— Rob Stoner
Look at the 1937 photograph that Rob shared. Arthur is walking — fedora, suit, tie — with a Speed Graphic large-format camera in his right hand, a Leica 35mm rangefinder around his neck, and a leather bag in his left hand. He is 22 years old. He is already carrying two cameras because he already understands that different moments require different tools.
The Speed Graphic was the definitive American press camera of the 1930s and 40s. It used 4×5 inch sheet film — each frame a deliberate, considered act. You loaded it one sheet at a time, focused with a rangefinder or ground glass, and fired. No motor drive. No burst mode. One shot, one chance. The tonal range and detail it could capture was extraordinary.
The Leica was the opposite — small, quiet, fast. A 35mm rangefinder that let Arthur move through a scene without drawing attention. The FSA photographers used Leicas for the candid moments, the in-between frames, the photographs that happened too quickly for the Speed Graphic.
Speed Graphic 4×5
The workhorse of American press photography. A large-format camera using 4×5 inch sheet film or glass plates. Heavy, slow to operate, and unforgiving — but capable of extraordinary tonal range and detail. Arthur carried one in his right hand on every FSA assignment.
Visible in the 1937 portrait: the Speed Graphic is in his right hand, a Leica around his neck. Two cameras, two worlds — large format for the definitive shot, 35mm for the moment.
Leica 35mm
The Leica gave Arthur mobility and speed that the Speed Graphic could not. A rangefinder camera, quiet and compact by the standards of the day. Rob's caption for the 1937 portrait says it all: 'Old school photo gear was heavy. One had to be in shape to schlep it around and hold it steady for the shot.'
The Leica around Arthur's neck in 1937 is almost certainly a Leica III or IIIa — the dominant 35mm camera of the FSA era, used by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and the entire Stryker team.
Graflex RB Series
A single-lens reflex camera using roll film or sheet film. Used for portraits and studio work where the Speed Graphic's rangefinder was less precise. The Dalí and Nixon portraits from Look Magazine show the precision that only a studio-quality camera could deliver.
The Nixon portrait — dramatic, unflinching, capturing what Rob calls 'Tricky's snarky, smug vibe' — required a camera that could hold a subject in a way that revealed character. Arthur had that gift regardless of the tool.
Flash powder / Strobes
Early FSA work used flash powder — a dangerous, one-shot illumination method. By the Look Magazine era, electronic strobes had arrived. The studio portraits of Dalí and Lopat show controlled, directional lighting that only strobes could provide.
The Lopat motion study — a pitcher mid-delivery, the ball a blur, the uniform sharp — required precise strobe timing. This was 1954 technology: no autofocus, no motor drive, no digital preview. Just Arthur's eye and his knowledge of the light.
Look Magazine: 31 Years at the Top
In 1940, Arthur Rothstein joined Look Magazine as Director of Photography. He would stay for 31 years — through the war, through the post-war boom, through the civil rights movement, through the Kennedy assassination, through Vietnam. Look was the second-largest magazine in America, behind only Life, and Arthur was its visual director.
The range of subjects he photographed in those three decades is staggering. Salvador Dalí in 1956 — a portrait that captures the surrealist's theatrical self-presentation with complete authority. Richard Nixon — Rob's caption notes that his father "totally captured Tricky's snarky, smug vibe." Eddie Lopat of the Yankees, a motion study from 1954 that predates sports photography as we know it.
When Look folded in 1971 after 35 years, Arthur moved to Parade Magazine as technical director of photography. He never stopped working. He never stopped seeing.
Salvador Dalí — Look Magazine, 1956. 389 people liked this when Rob shared it.
Arthur Rothstein / Look Magazine
Richard Nixon portrait. Rob's caption: "Dad totally captured Tricky's snarky, smug vibe."
Arthur Rothstein / Look Magazine
Eddie Lopat, New York Yankees — Arthur's 1954 motion study at Look Magazine's studio.
Arthur Rothstein / Look Magazine
Grace Rothstein: The Other Photographer
Grace Rothstein was a professional photographer in her own right. This is not a footnote. Rob makes it explicit in his captions: the photograph of Arthur laughing and holding baby Rob in 1951 is captioned "Grace Rothstein photo." The photograph of Arthur with two children at Mt. Rainier in 1952, walking toward a sign that reads "Road Open to Paradise," is also captioned "Grace Rothstein photo."
Rob's caption for the Mt. Rainier photograph reads: "My parents were both professional photographers." That sentence — simple, proud, matter-of-fact — tells you everything about how the Rothstein household worked. Two photographers, two sets of eyes, two careers running in parallel through the middle decades of the 20th century.
Grace's photographs of Arthur — the laughing father, the man at ease, the private person behind the public photographer — are among the most humanising images in the archive. They show us the man that 270,000 images of other people could never fully reveal.
"Dad and I celebrating my promotion to Sheriff, 1951." — Rob Stoner. 702 likes.
Grace Rothstein photo
Mt. Rainier, Washington, 1952. "Road Open to Paradise." Grace Rothstein photo. "My parents were both professional photographers."
Grace Rothstein photo
"Embraceable ewe." One of Arthur's lighter moments — the wit behind the documentary eye.
Arthur Rothstein photo
A Life in Photographs
Born July 17, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents
Hired by Roy Stryker as the first FSA photographer — age 19, still at Columbia University
Photographs the Dust Bowl: the skull on cracked earth, the farmer and sons dust storm — images that define an era
Documents migrant families in Florida, Appalachian poverty, and the New Deal resettlement program
Montana cattle ranches, Circle 'U' Ranch, rural America from the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest
Joins Look Magazine as Director of Photography — begins 31-year tenure
FSA camp documentation continues — Drake family musicians in Weslaco, Texas
WWII coverage for Look Magazine
Photographing America with Grace and their children — Mt. Rainier, the open road
Sports photography for Look — Eddie Lopat, the Yankees, motion studies in the studio
Portraits for Look — Salvador Dalí, Richard Nixon, the faces of mid-century America
Look Magazine folds after 35 years. Rothstein becomes technical director of photography at Parade Magazine
Dies November 11, New York City, age 70. His archive enters the Library of Congress.
America on the Road
Paperboy — Iowa City, 1940
Arthur Rothstein
Paradise, Pennsylvania — 1940
Arthur Rothstein
Federal employees, Greenbelt, Maryland — 1936. FDR's New Deal Resettlement Administration.
Arthur Rothstein / FSA
The breadth of Arthur Rothstein's America is extraordinary. A paperboy running through rain-slicked streets in Iowa City. A road sign pointing to Paradise, Pennsylvania. Federal workers standing on a mound of earth in Greenbelt, Maryland, tools on their shoulders, building the New Deal from the ground up. These are not famous photographs in the way the Dust Bowl images are famous. But they are the photographs that make the archive feel like a country — vast, varied, and fully inhabited.
Rob Stoner: Keeping the Archive Alive
Rob Stoner is a musician — he played bass for Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue, toured with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and has had a career in music that would be the subject of its own feature. But he is also his father's son, and he has taken on the work of sharing Arthur Rothstein's archive with the world in the most personal way possible: one photograph at a time, on Facebook, with his own captions.
The captions are the key. "Dad on assignment, 1937. Old school photo gear was heavy. One had to be in shape to schlep it around and hold it steady for the shot." "Dad and I celebrating my promotion to Sheriff, 1951." "My parents were both professional photographers." These are not archival descriptions. They are a son's memories, attached to his father's images, shared with anyone who will look.
Rob has 26 photographs in the album he shared with Gerald. The full archive at arthurrothstein.org has 270,000. Rob is doing something that no institution can do: he is putting a human face on a historical archive, one post at a time, and the response — 93 likes, 202 likes, 389 likes, 702 likes — tells you that people are paying attention.
"Rob and Gerald have been in conversation on Messenger. Rob knows who Gerald is. This feature is the result of that conversation — and it is dedicated to Rob, to Arthur, and to Grace."
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