September 1939. "Service station run by former resident of Oklahoma in Questa, New Mexico. Oklahoma newspapers as well as other Oklahoma products are for sale here." Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Admin. View full size.

October 1939. "Railroad crossing near Shaftsbury, Vermont." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

July 1939. "Sign tacked to pole near the post office. Main street, Pittsboro, North Carolina." This photo by Dorothea Lange, which has attracted no small amount of bemused commentary over the years, requires two avenues of explanation. The first is that Lange was a connoisseur of quirky signage, snapping away at whatever outre malapropism, mangled spelling or jarring juxtaposition might present itself by the side of the road (see here, here, here, here and here; there are dozens more). The second is that "piccolo" was Depression-era slang for jukebox or nickelodeon; a piccolo party's dancing was to canned music rather than a live band. Hence the PICKLE-LOW PARTY that will go on forever, thanks to the combined efforts of G.W. Leach, A.A. Hopkins and D. Lange. View full size.

September 1939. "Ernest W. Kirk Jr. with his two sons on their farm near Ordway, Colorado. They hold fruits of their farm, coming from their labor, which has placed them in a few months from almost hopeless condition to a family with net worth approaching a thousand dollars." Medium format negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

January 1939. "Headquarters and general store of Sunflower Plantation, just optioned by Resettlement Administration. Near Merigold, Mississippi." Medium format nitrate negative by Russell Lee. View full size.

1954. "Los Angeles. Actress Betty White rehearsing and performing on her daytime television talk show. Photos include preparations for a girl's birthday party." From photos by Maurice Terrell and Earl Theisen for Look magazine. View full size.

December 1941. "New York, New York. Children playing in Washington Square." Photo by Edwin Rosskam for the Office of War Information. View full size.

December 1941. "New York, New York. Evening in Washington Square." Photo by Edwin Rosskam for the Office of War Information. View full size.

January 1939. "Businesses in Mound Bayou, Mississippi." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

July 1939. "In the post office on a Saturday afternoon. Pittsboro, North Carolina." Medium format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange. View full size.

July 1943. Montgomery County, Maryland. "Climbing the ladder to the sliding board at the Glen Echo swimming pool." Medium format nitrate negative by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information. View full size.

New York circa 1934. "Margaret Bourke-White with her camera atop a stainless steel eagle projecting from the sixty-first floor of the Chrysler Building, overlooking Manhattan and the Hudson River." Gelatin silver print from a photograph by Bourke-White's darkroom assistant Oscar Graubner. Her backdrop is Rockefeller Center's RCA Building, completed in 1933. View full size.

October 1942. Chicago, Illinois. "Salvage. To feed the nation's munitions furnaces, tons of scrap from America's attics and basements are collected every day. Here, a junkman unloads his wagon in a central depot, where the scrap will be segregated and graded for shipment to steel mills." Medium format nitrate negative by Ann Rosener for the Office of War Information. View full size.

San Francisco circa 1930. "Franklin Series 147 'Pirate' Touring Phaeton on Gough Street at Lafayette Park." 5x7 glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.

September 1942. "Batavia, New York. Elba Farm Security Administration farm labor camp. An old man who has lived all of his life near Broadway, New York City, and who was taken off relief and sent to the Elba FSA camp to work in the harvest. He said, 'There is so much suffering in the world today that mine doesn't seem so much, and I'm doing my best to help bring in Uncle Sam's crops'." 4x5 nitrate negative by John Collier for the Office of War Information. View full size.