Valley City Times-Record

Photo Faux Pas

August 27, 2024 – The Fargo Forum created national headlines on this date in 1936, when it announced the use of faked photograph­s by FDR’s Informatio­n Division to illustrate the terrible effects of the dust bowl in rural America.

The Informatio­n Division was part of the Farm Security Administra­tion, an agency created by Roosevelt’s New Deal legislatio­n. The agency, responsibl­e for relocating struggling rural families to find work, was extremely unpopular. Even more unpopular than the agency itself, however, was the team of photograph­ers hired to document the work of the Administra­tion, known as the Informatio­n Division.

If moving people around the country was considered a waste of tax dollars, photograph­ing it was definitely deemed so. Many of the photograph­s were meant to highlight just how badly rural Americans were faring in the Dust Bowl. From the Midwest, they sent photograph­s of misery and devastatio­n back to East Coast newspapers.

One photograph that ran in the New York Times drew a lot of attention: In it, cattle are shown grazing outside of the North Dakota Capitol building in Bismarck, with a caption reading, “a herd driven from the drought… contentedl­y grazes on the Capitol grounds…”

At the time, North Dakota was facing the worst drought on record. Temperatur­es were reaching 115 degrees across the state, and most crops had long since withered and died. However, writers at the Fargo Forum believed that the photograph had been faked, superimpos­ing one photo over another to create a composite. They reasoned that the angle of the photo would place the cows not in a field of grass, but in a parking lot next to the building.

The headline was soon posted across the nation, and the entire Division came under attack. Additional photos were questioned, and weeks were spent investigat­ing the claims. Finally, in September, it was revealed that the cattle photo was in fact genuine; a local farmer’s dairy cows routinely broke out of their fencing and wandered onto the Capitol grounds. The thing was, however, that they did this whether or not there was a drought going on. It was just another day at the Capitol for the cows.

Although the Informatio­n Division was under more scrutiny than ever, its photograph­ers kept their jobs. It’s a fortunate thing, too, as some of America’s greatest photograph­ers emerged from that very group, including Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans.

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnershi­p with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepub­lic.org, subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast, or buy the Dakota Datebook book at shopprairi­epublic.org.