This study explores the FSA photographic project's engagement with the South from 1935-1943. In particular it describes Roy Stryker's Historical Section as an arm of the liberal state and as an adjunct of the mass communications industry. It charts the project's coverage of southern tenant farmers, African Americans, small towns and mechanized farms, from the schedules devised in Washington headquarters, through the photographers' work in the field, to the use of FSA images by the national media. The images are explained in terms of an interaction between the administrative dynamics of New...