Edward Steichen

New York City

The Bitter Years was the title of a seminal exhibition held in 1962 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Edward Steichen, and 2012 marks its fiftieth anniversary. The show featured 209 images by photographers who worked under the aegis of the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935–41, as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The FSA, set up to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression, included an ambitious photography project that launched many photographic careers, most notably those of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange.

The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs includes all the photographs in the original show, in a structure and sequence that reflect those devised by Steichen for the exhibition.

The Bitter Years was the last exhibition curated by Steichen as Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, in which role he had won international acclaim for his 1955 The Family of Man exhibition.

Artbook

The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs
ISBN: 9781935202868