Arthur Rothstein (1915 - 1985 )

Arthur Rothstein was born in New York City in 1915. Rothstein took up photography in college while attending Columbia University. After graduating, he was hired by Roy Stryker as the first photographer on the staff of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), where he became famous for his images of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Rothstein’s very straightforward photographs successfully document the interaction of FSA agents with poor farmers.

After the Depression, Rothstein worked for Look Magazine until it ceased publication in 1971. After Look’s demise, he started taking pictures for Parade Magazine, where he worked until his death in 1985.

Rothstein received more than fifty photography awards and wrote several books on the subject of photojournalism and documentary photography. He died in New Rochelle, New York in 1985. (CN)

Some of the homesteaders at the New Jersey Homesteads. Hightstown, NJ

Some of the homesteaders at the New Jersey Homesteads. Hightstown, NJ, Dec. 1936. Photograph courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection.

Scene at the New Jersey Homesteads cooperative. Near Hightstown, NJ, Dec. 1936. Photograph courtesy Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection.

With Albert Einstein as its major advocate and the renowned American artist Ben Shahn as a resident, Jersey Homesteads was a popular place to be in the 1930s. Jersey Homesteads was a small town of 1,200 acres located in what is now Roosevelt, New Jersey, near Hightstown and not far from Trenton. Approximately 200 families, totaling about 1,000 persons, lived there.

The Bauhaus-style houses at Jersey Homesteads were very inexpensive modular dwellings built for garment manufacturers and farmers. With the project costing $600,000 - $500,000 of which was supplied by the government – the houses were very inexpensive, selling for only $500 each. Rothstein, best known for his black and white pictures documenting the lifestyle of farmers and western settlers during the Depression, photographed Jersey homesteads in 1936. (CN)

References:

Temple University web site (see link below).

Rutgers University web site (see link below).