New UA Press Book Collects Rarely Seen Images From Depression-Era Arkansas

Photo Submitted

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – It’s All Done Gone: Arkansas Photographs from the Farm Security Administration Collection, 1935—1943 (cloth, $39.95), by Patsy G. Watkins, has been released by the University of Arkansas Press. This new book includes approximately 200 photos from the Farm Security Administration that were taken in Arkansas.

Photographers for the FSA captured around a quarter-million pictures documenting America’s poor and vulnerable communities during the Depression. The project was meant to build support for government programs developed to help the poor, and it is the largest photography project ever sponsored by the U.S. Of the photos in the archive, roughly 1,000 were taken in Arkansas, and from these, Watkins chose around 200 for the book. These photographs by acclaimed photographers Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, and others show the people and places of this time.

Watkins joined these photographs with discussions on the topics most relevant to Depression-era Arkansans, including cotton; tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and rehabilitation clients; resettlement farms; and the Flood of 1937.

It’s All Done Gone will be available for sale, signed by Watkins, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, at the Fayetteville Public Library, 401 W. Mountain St., Fayetteville.

The event is free and open to the public.

Watkins recently retired as professor and former chair of the  journalism department at the University of Arkansas. Her research focuses on news photography and the visual design of information.

About the University of Arkansas Press: The University of Arkansas Press advances the mission of the University of Arkansas by publishing peer-reviewed scholarship and literature of enduring value. The Press publishes books by authors of diverse backgrounds writing for specialty as well as general audiences in Arkansas and throughout the world.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.