The FSA strategically distributed the photographs to magazines and newspapers for free use at a time when print was the dominant form of visual media. Noble portraits of the working class, like Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’, were seared into the national consciousness.
But underneath the surface, a cultural shift was taking root as readers poured over pictures of the proletariat in their rough hewn denim work clothes. Here, cowboys, farmers, steel workers, coal miners, and soldiers effortlessly displayed a strapping silhouette, inadvertently launching a fashion revolution.
Now Marsh and publisher Tony Nourmand revisit this extraordinary chapter of cultural history in the new book, Denim: The Fabric That Built America 1935– 1944 (Reel Art Press). Together they poured through the FSA’s archive of some 170,000 images, selecting 250 works that explore how documentary photography has shaped American aesthetics and identity across race, gender, class, and age.
