A Pictorial Panorama of the 20TH CENTURY - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1999 by Bruce I. Bustard

Photographs from the National Archives and Records Administration freeze vivid images of a turbulent century in stunning pictures of humanity and inhumanity, triumph and tragedy, and famous and ordinary people.

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island; the Wright Brothers' first flight; building the Empire State Building; a Depression-era soup line; Omaha Beach on D-Day; an atomic bomb's mushroom cloud; Lyndon Johnson taking the presidential oath after the assassination of John F. Kennedy; a young marine in Da Nang, Vietnam; footprints on the moon; war in the Persian Gulf....

Old photographs are time machines. They allow us to look back in history, freeze a moment in time, and imagine ourselves as part of the past. Through historic photographs, we can see how famous and ordinary folk appeared in both posed and unguarded moments. We can relive great events and everyday life in exquisite detail. We can learn how people dressed and carded themselves, and we can sometimes judge their moods. Studying photographs helps us imagine what it was like when the first airplane took off, when a landing craft ramp fell open on D-Day, or when the first man stepped onto the moon.

The events of the 20th century have been captured in billions of photographs. Some are so familiar that they have come to stand for an event in its entirety. Others surprise viewers with their beauty, power, or original point of view. To commemorate the 20th century, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is presenting an exhibition of selected photographs from its holdings. It showcases the Archives' photographic riches and illustrates the changes in American society over the last 100 years, explores the role of Federal government photography in the U.S., and highlights the work of outstanding photographers such as Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and Ansel Adams.

The Archives is uniquely suited to mount such a visual history. Its photography holdings are enormous and varied--in the Washington, D.C., area, there are 9,000,000 photographs in the still picture stacks. In addition, there are 5,000,000 photographs in NARA's presidential libraries and thousands more among the records of its regional records services facilities.

The exhibition depicts many of the momentous events of the century as well as larger social trends. The section on the early 20th century, for example, includes historic photographs of the Wright Brothers' first airplane flight, an early automobile assembly line, and immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. From the era of World War I and the 1920s come images of Liberty Loan rallies, suffragettes protesting in front of the White House, and the construction of the Empire State Building. Views of the Great Depression and New Deal include souplines, the effects of the Dust Bowl, public works projects, and portraits of personalities such as Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

World War II saw a tremendous growth in the numbers of photographs taken by the government. The exhibit features pictures of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Normandy invasion, and celebrations of the end of the war. Postwar photographs illustrate the economic boom of the 1950s, the Cold War's bomb shelters and atomic tests, the Korean War, and the social ferment of the 1960s. The final sections of the exhibit feature collections of NARA's presidential libraries as well as images of the Vietnam War and space flight photography from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Interspersed throughout the chronological sections are eight portfolios from some of the most renowned photographers of the century, as well as others that invite visitors to discover the works of lesser-known, but exceptional individuals employed by the Federal government. Famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams, for instance, worked for the Department of the Interior for a few months, taking photographs of the American West, especially the National Parks. George W. Ackerman was with the Department of Agriculture for nearly 40 years, capturing images of rural life from the late 1910s into the 1950s. Other portfolios focus on Lewis Hine, whose child labor photographs helped push for legislation restricting the employment of young people; Dorothea Lange, renowned photographic chronicler of America's hard times during the Great Depression; Fenno Jacobs, who detailed navy life in the South Pacific during World War II; Yoichi Okamoto, White House photographer during the Johnson Administration; and Danny Lyon, who worked briefly for the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUMERICA photographic project in the early and mid 1970s.

The exhibition offers a glimpse of the important events, personalities, and trends that made up our contradictory century as it highlights the wealth of material in the still photography holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration.

"Picturing the Century: One Hundred Years of Photography from the National Archives" is being displayed in the Circular Gallery of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., through July 4, 2001. In early 2000, a number of new selections will replace many of the photographs that were originally displayed.